Eupraxia Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biotechnology company founded in 2011 and headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company develops localized, extended-release therapies using its proprietary drug delivery platform and is advancing treatments across multiple therapeutic areas through clinical development.
You spent more than a decade in cardiac anaesthesia before moving into entrepreneurship. What did your clinical experience teach you about the limitations of existing treatments?
Working in cardiac transplantation, there was very little margin for error. In the operating room or intensive care unit, we could put a catheter pretty much anywhere and deliver drugs precisely where and at the dose needed because we could run an infusion with a pump. The same drug that can save a life can take a life very quickly if you give it incorrectly.
Patients would head back into the world, where all of a sudden, you're back to imprecise medicines. The drug goes everywhere in your body. If you take an Advil tablet, you'll feel better about 45 minutes later, but after a few hours the pain returns. The question was: can we be precise in delivery? For localized diseases, can we have localized therapies where the drug stays there and delivers in a steady state? Ideally, you get much better efficacy, much better safety and an overall better outcome for patients.
Why has the industry historically focused more attention on discovery than delivery, and is that changing?
It ebbs and flows. Nobody wins a Nobel Prize for delivery, but they do for discovery. There is something very exciting about discovering a new molecule or a cure for an important disease. When you say, "I'm going to take an old medicine, but I'm going to make it work way better and much safer," that's just not as exciting. From the patient's perspective, they don't care what drug they're taking. They want something that works, makes them feel better and has very few side effects.
In the delivery world, sourcing early capital is very difficult. But it can be much lower risk because you're dealing with a compound that's already known. The active pharmaceutical ingredient we use, fluticasone propionate, is taken by tens of millions of people every day. Everybody knows the drug, and it reduces discovery risk. Once we started producing data showing a high probability of delivering a medicine in a way that could become a first-line therapy, perhaps both more effective and safer, that attracts investment.
You've spoken about the potential applications of the platform beyond gastroenterology. How large is the opportunity, and how do you think about building a global business around it?
The drug we're evaluating in clinical trials is currently used in an approved inhaled drug. We've turned it into an injectable and used it in a very different way within the gastrointestinal tract.
Across the indications within gastroenterology we're looking at, there are millions of patients in the United States alone who have suboptimal therapy and a great need for something that relieves symptoms, stops disease progression, is very safe and is convenient.
Beyond that, once people truly understand how precise we can be with our delivery technology, we can look at places where you only want to target a tissue. Cancer is a great example. Why give chemotherapy to every single cell in the body when the tumour itself is very small? We see opportunities far beyond gastroenterology, potentially reaching tens of millions of patients across a variety of diseases. Our goal is to help patients wherever they are. The reality of this industry is that your primary economic market is the United States. We would like, if we can, a simultaneous release in the United States and other major jurisdictions. We have a global path ahead of us in terms of trials, commercialization and our overall approach.
Canada produces world-class science and innovation, but many companies still look abroad to scale. What needs to change for Canada to become a stronger place to build and grow globally competitive life sciences companies?
There are incredible scientists in Canada. Discovery is very strong. But when you get into development and commercial manufacturing at scale, it becomes very difficult. The opportunities and infrastructure simply aren't there if you want to supply the world with a drug. Our manufacturing for what will be our commercial launch had to move, by necessity, to the US.
Accessing capital is also challenging. There is more than a tenfold increase in life sciences-focused capital available in the US versus Canada. Drug development is very expensive, and large-scale investment primarily comes from the US. Many of the expert people don't reside in Canada because that's where the large companies are. Ironically, we've hired quite a few people in the United States who are actually Canadian. They left Canada to pursue their careers, and getting them back is pretty much impossible.
The only way it changes is if the government moves at the speed of business. We cannot ask our patients or our investors to wait nine months for a political process before capital is unleashed and decisions can be made. Canadian pension funds spend a huge amount of their investable dollars outside Canada. Redirecting those funds toward Canadian innovation would be a start, but it would probably require a wholesale change in how investment decisions are made.
Our patients need our drug. We're not going to wait. We're going to go where there is the least amount of friction to getting the job done.
What are the most important milestones for Eupraxia over the next 12 months?
We are focused on delivering data. We're in late-stage trials now, and over the next six to eight months, we have quite a lot of data to deliver.
We're also planning our final trials to start in 2027, ideally allowing us to launch our drug in the next three or four years if the data continues to support it. We're using that clinical data to cycle faster, better and cheaper with other assets in areas such as oncology, central nervous system diseases and other indications, building a company with both a late-stage pre-commercial business and an early-stage development engine.
