Dr. Shalabh Gupta, MD - Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Unicycive Therapeutics | CEO's You Should Know

Dr. Shalabh Gupta, MD - Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Unicycive Therapeutics | CEO's You Should Know

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, and welcome to this week's edition of CEOs.
You should know I am Steve Dellson and I'm their
old to be joined by doctor Gupta, the founder, chairman,
and CEO of Unicisive Therapeutics. Thanks for being here today.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Thank you, Steve, Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
We're excited to jump into the conversation. Why don't we
kick it off by sharing a little bit about yourself
and your background?

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Sure, Steve, wh I'm a trained physician, did clinical medicine,
did my internship, residency fellowship. All right, here we every
recording in New York City. I'm trained, was the attending
physician at NYU and y A School of Medicine. I
was attending physician as well as faculty at the School
of Medicine. I also have a graduate degree in finance

(00:39):
and healthcare Finance and Management. I started my career initially
working with a biotech company as an advisor to them
to run their clinical trial. From there, I went to
work on Wall stuges in analysts. I covered biotecha stocks
and then I covered pharmaceutical stocks. Moved to California work
Forgin and taking corporate strategy, founded two companies and uni

(01:01):
Sizes is my third company. I founded the company and
I was fortunate to take it public and we are
currently working on our two drugs in development for treatment
of community diseases.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Wow. That's exciting, very impressive background.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
And I know that you're a trained physician before you
moved into the biotech and entrepreneurs space. What inspired that transition?

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Absolutely, Steve.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
You know. As a physician, I sat down or spent
nights in ICU taking care of patients and one of
the commerce theme I found by talking to these patients
over the years that almost everyone when they are sick
and there towards the last stage of their life, they
have regrets. In one common theme that I found which

(01:43):
is consistently talked about in many other places, it's the
regret of not trying something or regret of not taking
an either a risk or an effort that they wanted
to do. Over course of a decade as a physician,
I found that most of my time as a clinician
was spent on doing things that were not related to
patient care.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
I loved patient.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Care, but I felt that a practice of ptisone at
least as I was practicing in New York at NYU
was more geared towards other parts of healthcare. Sure, so
I wanted to do something better with my life, and
that sort of inspired me to focus on innovation. And
I had a degree in finance, so I thought, what
if I could take innovations that are happening all over

(02:27):
the world and bring them into real product, real opportunities
that can affect patious life.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
I love that, super inspiring. Great to see that you're
able to do that. Looking back, what experiences do you
think really shaped your leadership philosophy?

Speaker 3 (02:41):
There are three or four key themes that I consistently
come back to. One is that in order for someone
to lead, you have to lead yourself. As a physician,
we have to instill confidence in patients. Physicians were supposed
to be healer or educator for patients. As you know,
our modern medicine does not really come anywhere close to it.

(03:02):
We more often than not trying to fix the problem
that patients have. But the first one, foremost is to
lead yourself before you can lead somebody else. The second
one is that as a physician, if I just go
rely on my americal experience, even though I practice as
a physician, but I relied on my allied healthcare professionals,
so my nursing staff, my nursing aids. Because if I

(03:26):
gave a prescription to a patient overnight, I took care
of patients in Carribascar Unit to Currige Rehab. They have
medicines that are going to drop their blood pressure. You
need nurses and nursing aid to make sure that the
patients don't get up on their own.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Without proper precaution. So it's about.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Being able to ally yourself with the team around you.
And number three and most important in my mind, is
that have a deeper purpose. The organizations to the companies
that are built on purpose, they tend to stay become
successful versus focusing on the next shiny thing, including the
financial rewards.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
For sure, that's great advice, great philosophy to have. I'm
sure along the way there may have been people that
have inspired and influenced you. Looking back, who has been
the biggest influences or mentors within the business or science space.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
I don't have one mentor. I am mentors to Steve
and this is something which I learned. I found people
who have been prior CEOs of public companies in bioteket Space.
I've been influenced and mentored by investors, some of them
way back in time before I even founded the company Unicisive.

(04:36):
They gave me advice that helped me to shape how
I think about our pipeline drugs. And then there are
investors along with the investment bankers advisors who have played
a key role in building the company, also giving me
advice about how should we think about financing, advancing the
company as well as growth of the company. So it's
a series of people and the only advice I can

(04:59):
give found yourself with as many people as possible, people
whom you respect, feel inspired by, and the only obserlish
I can make that many of them have given me
something that I can't pay them back. So in order
to fulfill that cycle, if you're a karmic cycle, I
try to advise our mentor many startups at the Stanford

(05:21):
is a promone work every quarter at least one company
I advise, and with the idea that I've received advice
and help from people that I cannot pay them back.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
I love that. I think mentorship is so important and
to your point, you don't know everything right, so it's
always important to be able to lean in on that
trusted circle that you have and even more important to
pay it forward. So I love that philosophy.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
I know we talked a little bit earlier about your background,
but looking back, was there one pivotal moment that really
brought you to unicisive?

Speaker 3 (05:50):
I think I practice in cardiology, which I talked about
it earlier. One of the common problems for patients who
suffered from kidney diseases that the one calmness cause of
mortality and mobidity for kidney patients happits cardiology. Having seen
patients in card rehab, I saw patients who have these

(06:13):
debilitating conditions. For example, many of the number one costs
of chronic community disease is diabetes. So these patients suffer
from myriads of diseases if you will. CKD or chronic
community disease is not one thing they suffer from. So
understanding that these patients are managing not one disease, one diagnosis,

(06:34):
if you will, but five or six of diagnosis together
made me appreciate and realize that their pain point is
very different than on one may imagine. Because the communist
problems these facials have, they are taking a number of
medications per day on an average twenty to thirty pills
per day, and half of them because of their facet control.
And that's what gave me the insight. I am not

(06:57):
a neprologist, so I didn't the understand the datastive patients problem,
but I had seen these patients patients who are in
chronic conditions. They suffer from many commobidties. So understanding that landscape,
understanding that how it's the clinician I saw these patients
gave me perspective to understand that if you could solve

(07:18):
their biggest problem, the one that.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
They suffer, we probably have a product.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
We have something that we can create a solution and
create a company around it.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
It's awesome philosophy. So it's so interesting that that that's
such a complex world. Like you said that these people
are having maybe like multiple treatments that you're trying to
help solve. So that's that's an awesome background. Those are
listeners that are tuning in that might not really know
what the Unicisive is. Can you give a snapshot of
what the company does and what it means.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
Unicizing is a publicly listed company, a lead treatment to
lead drug that is spending FDA approval is oxy lengthenum carbonate.
The drug addresses high phosphate. This is a problem that
patients on diallasies suffer from. They are roughly five hundred
and fifty thousand patients who are on dialysis every year.

(08:07):
Eighty percent of them needs something to manage their fastphate.
Phosspheid is not a problem for people who have otherwise
normal kidney function, but for these patients who cannot excrete
phosphate fosti combines with calcium causes them to die from
heart attack or causes bone fracture. So, to summarize five
hundred fifty thousand patients on dialysis, eighty percent of them,

(08:29):
that's four hundred and fifty thousand or so or north
of that, who needs something to manage.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Their fast feight. Six approved rugs on the market.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yet over decades people have not been able to achieve
their target serum phosphate. And the reason is because of
three problems that exists with the current treatment. And those
three problems are they take large number of pills, so
we talk to a pill burden, or if they don't
take large number of pills, they take large pills in size,

(08:57):
there's some material. Number three is that these large spills
that they take, they have to be chewed. So you're
asking somebody to chew one or two pills after each meal.
And imagine these a large pill. And you may say, well,
I don't really care, and that maybe just you think
about it, But we are asking these pishies to chew
these pills after every meal and not for one or
two days, not one or two months.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
You're asking the two for us of their life.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
These pills stasts horrible because they are made of metal
and you're asking people to chew metal. So if I
ask you after every breakfast please chew a large size
pill of pitch full of metal, you would realize you
feel defeated. And many of these patients don't want to
take these pills.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah. Absolutely, it's really putting that patient mindset first. It
sounds like the approach that you guys are going for.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
So our solution with overse IF approved, this offers the
best in class solution. And what we are offering patience
is the ability to take one small pill they can swallow.
And this is the size of the pill is remarkable.
It's the size of baby esperneur around their size. Wow,
and they can take the pill, one pill with each
meal and their software which is problem. We ran a

(10:04):
clinical trial roughly seventy percent of patients can be managed
with one pill or less with three times a day.
And if there are patients who need more than that,
they can take more than one pill. But again they
can swallow and the size of pill does matter. And
these patients are again they're taking these pills over a
long period of time.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
It's going to be a game changer and you're going
to help change millions of lives.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Absolutely, that's great.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
What personally attracted you to focus on kidney disease as
an area of unmet needs?

Speaker 3 (10:31):
You know, see if when you think about medicine, we
have made tremendous improvement. So I'll take oncology or cancer
treatment as an example. We still have more treatments necessary
for cancer treatment, but in kidney diseases, unfortunately, the bar
hasn't shifted that much off late. There've been one or

(10:51):
two new drugs that are coming up, but it's still
the innovation. The pace of innovation has not happened that fast,
and I felt there was an opportunit to focus on
a disease area that wasn't well at ressed.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
It's awesome. As a CEO of a public biotech company,
how do you balance that scientific vision with your financial background,
with that business execution side of the business.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
I think one has to be very disciplined because I
always say there are three stakeholders that we serve as
a company as a CEO. One is an investor. Without
their investment, there is no organization. Second is patients. Without
the patients making a difference. For patient, we can't really
make a difference. And thirty physicians or healthcare professionals. If

(11:35):
we have a solution that physicians or healthcare professionals are
able to prescribe or be able to advocate for, then
the patients will get that treatment or intervention. So these
are the three stakeholders we serve, and if we are disciplined,
we focus on the ultimate vision of bringing the drug
to market and then launching the drug. That is the

(11:57):
next thing of the talk about it. But we as
a small company, we believe there is an opportunity to
launch this drug, and we can launch the drug, and
that is how we make all these three stakeholders win.
Physicians win because they have a treatment. Patients win because
they have a solution that they can take invested, because
they gave us a risk capital and they believe in us,

(12:17):
so we can execute on all three stakeholders.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
That's awesome. And speaking of the drug itself, let's talk
a little bit about the science and your lead therapy OLC.
How does that stand out compared to other drugs that
are out there.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
So we've run three different clinical trials in this drug.
Two of them were in healthy volunteers, and the last
one we ran, which we call pivotal clinical trial was
and patience to summarize our drug offers best in class
efficacy potential more ctistically without making broader claims, say, let
me focus on their last clinical trial data. Before I

(12:53):
go into it, I'll caution it was a single arm
trial and it was which means it was not randomized.
It was compared with anything because these patients were on
a standard of care and they were switched over on
our drug. That's number one, And the other part is
a smaller patient population. It was eighty six patients who
were given the drug. Having said those caveats, the trial

(13:14):
showed something really impressive. As an example, our drug was
given to patients who were previously on a.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Standard of care.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
When they were given a standard of care, only fifty
one percent of patients were able to achieve their target
serum phosphate when they were given our drug. Over six weeks,
that advocacy on number of patients who were able to
achieve target sinum FOSPHD level improved to ninety percent.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Wow, so fifty one that is a.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Forty percent improvement of roughly forty percent improvement. And I
understand this in a very small patient population everything, but
as you said, it's still that was remarkable. Number two,
as I talked about the seventy percent of patient going in,
we assumed that patients may.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Have to take one pill or two pill.

Speaker 3 (13:59):
But what we found roughly sixteen nine percent of patients
were able to take either one pill with each mean
or less.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
So that makes a second surprise for us and positively.
And number three was that when you look at adversive
and profile again, this clinical trial showed the only two
adverseiments that were noted. One was a diary of nine
percent and vomiting of six percent. And the reason I
bring this up because patients were able to tolerate this

(14:26):
truct better than anything else we have seen in the
clinical trial data. And our vision is that as we
get approval, we bring this struct to market. We want
to be able to find a way to give this
structure as many people as necessary they can take it,
and patients are really looking for a solution.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
A hundred percent. It's inspiring not just to see the
results of the drug, but also improving the patient's quality
of life. Like you said, they had to chew the
pills that currently taste like metal, and to be able
to go down to one or some situations none could
be life changing for the patients. That's awesome. I know
the FDA recently issued a complete response letter for OLC.

(15:05):
Can you walk us through what happened and how the
company is currently addressing it.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yes, this was a disappointment or is set back for
the company? Sure, CRL is like getting to the last
stage and then being asked to do something else. On
the flip side, that complete response letter cited only one deficiency,
and I think I'll talk about that deficiency in a minute.
Before we talk about the deficiency, I want to call
out that FT had no questions about pre clinical safety,

(15:33):
safety in general advocacy, clinical trial or anything else.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
This was a manufacturing.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
It was in a third party manufacturing that wasn't even
our primary manufacturer. It was a manufacturing that takes the
powder puts into bill as in tableting, and we have
identified a second manufacturer that has already made a commercial
greade product. Our current plan is to meet to the
agency find which is the shortest, best possible way to
get the drug to the market. And we believe in

(16:02):
partnership with agency. We feel that their goal and our
goals are aligned to bring the drug as quickly as possible.
So I feel very confident to working with agency, we'll
figure out what is the best way to get the
drug approval.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
That's awesome to hear. How do you think about innovation
and biotech balancing bold breakthroughs but also having that practical
realities of the regulations and the commercialization of the industry.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
There are many ways you can create innovation, Steve. There
are innovations that take decade two decades and they will
eventually bake it to the market, and many of them
are required different type of investment, different type of time horizon.
There are other innovations that address market need and again
they are focused on complete breakthrough or paradigm shift. But

(16:51):
the third type of innovations are there. There is an
unmet need, people understand regulatory pathway, there is a well
defined macan action, but there is still something missaying we
a focus on our path on the third category. It
seems in some ways it's incremental innovation, and I acknowledge that.
But what it does do is that you can focus

(17:12):
on creating a solution in a very short period of
time with a smaller capital requirement. And all three of
them are necessary. I'm not here to tell you the
third one is only one better. I think it's up
to the individuals and the teams, and the companies and
their investors to decide what is best for them. Companies
like Putt took a decade before they had a product forcialty,

(17:34):
for them and for the world, they had a solution.
They were working on MR and technology. In the moment
COVID game, they were able to create a solution. We
all play a role in ecosystem. I found that being
able to focus in the third category, where there is
a very definite unmet need, regulary pathway is clear. We

(17:54):
understand mean action or target. We can create a solution
and bring it to market.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
That's great to hear. Now, I know kidney disease affects
one out of every seven US adults, and I think
something surprising for me was ninety percent is undiagnosed. How
big of a healthcare challenge are we really talking about?
Only look at kidney disease as a whole.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
See, it's a big problem. The biggest problem is that
many of the patients of people who suffer with chronic
coatuny disease, they don't know they have a problem. And
many or many times or quite often these patients will
find out by doing routine blood work. In the initial
stages of CKD there is no symptoms, and you may say, well,

(18:36):
there are no symptoms, so there is no problem, but that's.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Not the way it is.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
Over years, and sometimes we're decades, these fashion then eventually
go into chronic coatuty disease.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
At the last stage, which is dialysis. Most the patience
are on dialysis.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
The only thing that is a as a hope for
them is getting all in transplant. And as you probably know, kidneys,
they are not enough kidneys to go around. That's number
one and number two. Not everybody is a candidate for
organ transplant either. So we are living in a world
where people suffer from diabetes, from heart problems, and ultimately
all these conditions cause chronic annuity disease.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
I know we just talked about innovation a little bit
from that perspective, but looking at the kidney care industry
as a whole, what are some of the biggest barriers
innovation within kidney care and how are you really working
to overcome those.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
I think when you think about chronic communit disease, it's
not just a question but the kidney problem, but also
where their care is given, how their care is supported.
I think the government is doing a lot of new
incentives and programs to help these faces, but we would
need to start much earlier in the intervention paradigm. It

(19:50):
will be ideal if we can stop chronic duties. It's
from progressing from stage one stage two, because when you
start to go stage three, B or beyond, then it
becomes it really hard to avert that. It requires life
science lifestyle modifications. Believe it or not, the best thing
to treat something is to never have that disease happen.

(20:11):
And there is a there is a work that can
be done. There is work that is being done catually
on the second part is that there are new indeventionals
that are coming up. For example, GLP ones are not
only treatment for diabetes, but they're also helping with the
improvement of community diseases. And number three is that just awareness.
I think creating more awareness in people in society at

(20:31):
large will be helpful.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Great point looking at I know we're in the early stages,
but looking at unicisive, what does success look like for
you three to five years from now.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
The biggest thing that I think about every single day
at the moment is to get a drug approved and
then be able to launch it. I want to tell
you that commercial launches are hard for any company launching
a product in the US, and regulated markets are hard.
But we find ourself in a unique place that because
is a particular disease category, there are fewer number of

(21:07):
physicians who prescribe it. You can launch a drug with
as small as a small company. As an example, we
know there are twenty one hundred physicians who prescribe roughly
fifty percent of pastate lowering therapy. We know who they are,
we know geographically where they're located.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
We have reached out to.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
As many of those twenty one hundred physicians as of now.
The goal is not to wait for approval, because approval
allows you to be able to potentially sell and they
can prescribe the drug, but to create awareness and I
before even the company became as an existing company and
public trade company, I had gone out to meet with
one hundreds hundred frilogies. Today we are doing three things

(21:45):
before the approval and then we can talk about approval
and launch. Number one, we are going into talking to
as many of those physicians as possible as part of
advisory board.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
At board.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
Number two, we are going into medical conferences and presenting
a data clinical data was the best way to create
awareness is to get per reat publication. Most recently we
had a publication in a Clinker Journal of American Society
and Nephrology CE Jason, which is one of the most
reputable journals out there. And number three is that we
are talking to the artist publication, but also at the

(22:17):
various medical conferences focus on nephrologists, healthcare allied healthcare professional
for example, dietitian nurses who play a role in care,
and also patient focus conferences. So the idea is to
create enough awareness. When the product is available, you have it.
They pulled apart from the market. People want to get

(22:38):
on the drug and we see that today. The calmless
feedback I get from nephrologies is that is no brainer.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, sounds like it's me. It's about educating them so
as soon as it's approved they're able to jump on
and immediately and improve those patients' lives. Correct. So, looking
even further out, if you were to look a decade ahead,
what role with unicisive play and reshaping kidding disease treatment.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
A decades from now, let's say longer term time horizon.
We believe we have an opportunity to bring our first
druggun to market, advanced, a second drug which is finished facement,
clinical trial, focus and acut kidney injury, and continuing to
focus on our attention and kidney treatment in general. There's
a continuum of care. We can stop sky from happening.

(23:24):
We can encourage your patients from you know, not ever
go from stage three B or two stage four. And
our second drug has a promise to treat acute kidney injury,
which has effectively there's nothing available to be able to
treat those patients makes sense.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
I know we talked about this a little bit, but
you guys are a publicly traded company. What should investors
know about the story right now?

Speaker 3 (23:47):
I think we are very near to Milestone's are refiling
through NDA, getting our next pieriuferrate, which is an approval
date from FDA, then getting approval, and then commercially launching
the drug. These are very exciting times. It is something
that we feel really really excited and looking forward to it.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
It's awesome. Speaking of looking forward to the future, what
role do partnerships and collaborations play within your growth strategy?

Speaker 3 (24:14):
We believe that if you are focused on bringing the
drug to market, you want to do the right thing
by the patient's, physicians and investors. The partnership is definitely
something we are always open for open about. More importantly,
I'll call out that we already have partnerships in China,
we have partnerships in South Korea.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
And the idea was from.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Very biginning very clear to us that a small company,
we will never be able to commercialize in every single
part of the world, so we've done partnerships outside US. Currently,
we are talking to Dallasis organizations who play huge role
in terms of taking care of these paties. So many
former partnership, but collaboration is the way to be able
to bring the product.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
That's awesome, Doctor Group. It sounds like you're a very
busy man, right going over the diferent challenges of different approvals, networking,
making sure that you have all those relationships in place.
How do you personally stay resilient and focused in such
a high stakes environment.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
See one of the best job. The best thing about
my job is that I get to work with people
who are all motivated towards a common goal. We have
a team of roughly twenty two full time employees at
the moment, and twenty two seems like a small number,
but we've been able to get the drug to market
to file for approval. So working with the smart people
who are common focus. And the other part is that

(25:31):
I've done many parts of my career, many different roles.
This is one thing I feel that is my calling,
my mission. Love that I feel very inspired to be
able to do that and anything else that is out there,
whether it's challenges or feeling burnt out. I have weather places,
I focus on my family, I have weather hobbies I
do keep myself physically fit and active, so I definitely

(25:53):
believe those are the ways to be able to manage that.
But this is not something that I'm doing for what
the next inflection point. I think this is something we
believe in. I believe in my heart of heart, so
I love what I do every day.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
That's important. Team is so important to have a strong
team around you. But I think that even throughout this
whole conversation, your passion for what you're doing definitely comes through.
So that is extremely crucial, and you could definitely tell
that you have a deep passion for what you're doing
right now.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
Looking back, what is maybe one mistake or set back,
whether it's in your current role or previous roles, that
really taught you a lesson?

Speaker 3 (26:26):
I think it's about building the team, finding the right people,
and not just the right people, but growing the team
as you go along. I continuously find that even if
a team is performing at their very peak, I don't
take it for granted. The goal is to always look
for challenges that might be you may be seeing down

(26:49):
the horizon. So commercializing a drug, so we are currently
thinking about building our commercial team, adding the team adequately,
building the right people so that they are building blocks.
Start with foundation and then build upon on those foundation
blog It's been something which has been a learning experience,
and I think this is the calmness one of the
biggest challenges that any CEO will face.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
You can also overbuild.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
You can hire too many people too quickly, and that
has its own chalization.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, completely agree. I always love asking this for every
guest to sit down with me. What advice would you
give future biotech entrepreneurs or physician scientists that are looking
to make an impact. Maybe look back that something you
wish you knew back then when you first were starting out.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
So I talk about three things, and it doesn't mean
that I don't have it, but these are three things
you have to keep in mind for anyone. It doesn't
matter the entrepreneurship in biotech or healthcare, just entrepreneurs in general.
Number one is the perceiverance. Without perceiverance, you will never
make it because there will be obstacles and sometimes it
requires you to just push through it.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
Number two is patients.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
I wish I had a little bit more patience because
sometimes you wanted things to be solved tomorrow and it
will take a little bit longer. Anything of value takes
time to create and you have to have patients. And
the third thing is that it's personal. Each one of
us have our own level of faith. But having a faith,
because you are going to create something, it will be

(28:15):
full of chaos in the beginning and as you grow, oh,
there will be more challenges and faith helps you to
overcome those challenges because you have an internal vision how
you want it to come to reality. I think these
are the three things that I remind myself. Perseverance I've
never had a problem. Patience I've learned over time, and
faith is something Today we want to launch the drug

(28:36):
in the US market, having that very clear vision how
we can launch it, how we can successfully create a
value for patients, physicians, and investors is something I keep
in mind.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
I love that that's something you can't teach, so it's
great advice for anyone that's tuning in. So looking ahead,
what is one thing you want people to most remember
about Unicisive and what the mission is.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
I think there is one thing I could tell you
is that we are able to bring potential best in
class drug, if approved, offers a solution to patience that
people have not been able to find after six trucks
on the market, seventy five percent of patients, So if
you go the strict criteria or if you go more

(29:18):
lining criteria, forty four percent patient are not able to
meet their target centum phosphate level. We believe we have
an opportunity to make a difference. It's a commercially viable opportunity.
There's a roughly one point five billion dollars say so
of these trucks every year. And the third thing is
that we feel this is driven by the need, patious need,
physicious desire and can't wait to work with everybody bring

(29:43):
this structure market.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
We love that. To Goore, we've covered a lot today.
Is there anything you feel like we might have missed
that you want our listeners to know?

Speaker 3 (29:50):
No, I think I appreciate your time, and I appreciate
listeners who are tuning in. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
We appreciate you. Thank you so much for taking us
through your background, telling us the story and the why
and why Unicisive was created. And we're really looking forward
to when it's approved and the millions of lives you're
going to be able to change within the kidney disease.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
Thank you, Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
And thank you everybody for tuning in to this week's
edition of CEOs. You should know