Dyadic International closes out busy 1Q as it devotes efforts to fight coronavirus

Dyadic International Inc (NASDAQ:DYAI) CEO Mark Emalfarb said he was “pleased” with the progress made by the biotechnology company during a busy first quarter that saw the company step up in the global fight against the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The Jupiter, Florida-based company is working with worldwide research partners to leverage its proprietary C1 technology to express an increasing number of potential coronavirus vaccines and antibody candidates.

“Besides the tremendous potential benefit to society, these COVID-19 projects highlight the broad appeal of our C1 platform to potentially advance the process of vaccine and biopharma drug development in large and growing addressable markets,” Emalfarb said in a statement Thursday.

READ: Dyadic shows off R&D revenue growth, scientific progress in 2019 full-year results

“I am very pleased with the substantial progress we made in the first quarter, further executing on our growth strategy and with our efforts increasingly well-aligned to address many of the key global healthcare industry challenges,” Emalfarb added.

“The data we are generating further highlights the robustness of our C1 gene expression platform and its broad and ever-growing potential applications. As a result, we continue to expand the potential range of commercial opportunities for Dyadic through our relationships with both existing and new partners who are well-established and top tier in their respective sectors.”

Emalfarb added that the firm’s overall partnership efforts have been “highly collaborative and well-coordinated.”

Dyadic’s C1 expression system is a fungal expression technology for producing enzymes to help bring biologic vaccines, therapeutic enzymes, proteins, biosimilars and drugs to market faster and at a lower cost. The company has ongoing projects in the animal health sector and active programs with many of the top ten human pharmaceutical companies.

Pharma showing high interest

During the quarter ended March 31, 2020, Dyadic progressed into the second phase of two initial projects with one of its animal health collaborators. It also developed a library of human-like C1 strains with higher yields, greater purity and better stability using its self-funded glycoengineering efforts.

Emalfarb said that the efforts are resulting in Dyadic receiving “increased levels of interest” from the pharmaceutical industry.

The company ended the quarter with around $34 million in cash and equivalents, with $$4.6 being in cash and $26.6 million derived from short-term investment securities. Its net loss for the period was approximately $2.2 million or $0.08 per share, which was relatively flat compared to the same period a year ago.

Contact Angela at [email protected]

Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas

Story by ProactiveInvestors