COSMOFACTORY

Deanna: [00:00:00] This episode is about bacteriophages. It's about an intriguing subsection of microbiome skincare. It's about technology transfer from pharma to beauty and back again. And it's about growing an innovative biotech business from the ground up. Today on the Cosmofactory podcast, my guest is Milan Bunata, Business Director of FagoFarma.
Deanna: Welcome.
Milan: Hello, everyone.
Deanna: Thank you so much for joining us. We're excited to hear from you today.
Milan: I'm excited as well [00:01:00] to be here and to be the part of a wonderful podcast about the beauty and innovation in that.
Deanna: Thank you so much. So I want to start our conversation off with the very basics. Um, will you just remind us what phage technology is?
Milan: Well, generally said, bacteriophages are microorganisms, uh, much smaller than bacteria. In fact, they are very similar to viruses, but they are not viruses at all. And specific of these microorganisms is that they are bacteria killers. Thank you for joining us. So there are something like parasites to bacteria, they are looking or seeking for their proper host bacteria, and they are killing them in the way that they are laying their DNA inside the bacterial cells and inside the cell, the DNA multiply, create a new generation of bacteriophages.
Milan: And then these bacteria of ages just shred the bacteria away and a new [00:02:00] generation of bacteria of ages is born and is going to the world to seek for new bacteria. The great thing about them is that they are very specific. So that means that they are seeking only for their host bacterial strain, not only species, but also the strain.
Milan: So if you have, for example, bacteria of age that is targeting. For example, Staphylococcus aureus, which is a very famous pathogen. So you can have a bacteriophage that is targeting just some species of Staphylococcus aureus and some other, uh, it remains intact. So that means that you can use them for very selective, uh, killing or selective destruction of bacteria.
Milan: No
Deanna: yeah, no, excellent. Thank you for that. yeah. And so I have to be honest, I've observed a bit of reluctance to adopting phage technology over the years, um, in cosmetics and skincare, especially, um, but we are seeing it in both the ingredient sector, um, as well as the consumer brand space. So I [00:03:00] want to share some examples just for context, because it's certainly, um, an important emerging technology now, um, who follow my work beyond the podcast will have read about a biopharmaceutical company called Lysando, which is based in Germany, and that company specializes in the development of antimicrobial proteins, so proteins that are selectively eliminating bacteria, um, They've been doing this work for, I don't know, 15, 16 plus years, and I think they have like a remarkable number of patents, um, and, and have developed hundreds of prototypes, um, based on their research.
Deanna: There's also a U. S. based company called, um, Dermagen that makes an ingredient, uh, called Dermatide Smooth. Um, they use what's called phage display technology, meaning that a protein or peptide, and I, I believe it's a peptide in this case. is actually fused to the protein envelope of the bacteriophage and thereby changing the way that it's displayed or understood by its specific bacteria.
Deanna: As [00:04:00] you said, they're each seeking one particular bacteria, so it will show up differently to that. Um, in the brand space, uh, there's a, a brand, um, from a Russia based company. The company I think is Micromir Bio, um, and their consumer product is called Micromir Gel. Um, this is rather distinctive in that they list 81 bacteriophages on their ingredient list.
Deanna: So that is, um, a bit overwhelming to me, but, um, I, I assume they're addressing a lot of concerns. Um, I don't know much about the brand as, as you can maybe tell by my remarks, but they're definitely in this space. Um, There's a consumer eczema care brand, uh, called GladSkin, which is owned by a Dutch biotech company, um, called Mycreos Group, um, and, uh, back in 2020, L'Oreal signed a licensing deal, um, to use their endolysin protein, um, I try to do my desk research in advance of, of each podcast, but I can't actually confirm the length of that licensing agreement, so I don't [00:05:00] know if they're still working together, but, um, uh, certainly, um, Every beauty maker is doing their, their research in microbiome skincare for sure.
Deanna: Um, a U. S. based brand that's received some, some attention is Phyla. They've secured significant investment funding. In fact, it was just about one year ago now, probably as you're listening to the podcast, that Cishedo invested in that brand. Um, Phyla is focused mostly on acne with their bacteriophage platform right now.
Deanna: Um, but, but they're definitely at work on addressing, um, what we would call chronic disease with this technology as well. And for our listeners, especially interested in microbiome beauty, I want to mention that Marie Drago, the founder of Galenae Microbiome Skin Care was my guest here on the Cosmofactory podcast, um, in episode seven.
Deanna: And, um, somewhat coincidentally, Cisheto actually acquired that brand, uh, in 2022. So you may want to listen to that episode after this one, of course. Um, And while we're thinking about consumer [00:06:00] brands, I'll turn back to you, Milan. FagoFarma does have consumer skincare product on the market in the Czech Republic, where your company is based.
Deanna: Will you tell us about the Fago Care Gel?
Milan: Yes, certainly. So, uh, as you mentioned, it's a, it's a gel, uh, that contains living bacteria of ages. Uh, these bacteria of ages are targeting, uh, two species, two bacterial species that, uh, that are living. Are believed to be responsible for, uh, acne and other dermal, uh, dermal infections. So it's a staphylococcus aureus, which is one of the most common pathogen generally.
Milan: And, uh, the second one is scutibacterium acne. Uh, formerly it was named scutibacterium. Propionibacterium acne, but scientists decided for some reason to change the name. They are doing it time to time because they like it more. And the result is that we need to change everything in the regulatory [00:07:00] papers.
Milan: So, so yeah, Facocare is a, is a gel which was developed in collaboration with our partner cosmetic company to be our, uh, to be our. Well, except in general for the skin, and it contains these living bacteriophages against these two bacterial species and the main target or the main aim why we develop this to bring bacteriophages close to the people and do to learn people that they can use bacteriophages that the bacteriophages can be used for health care in some way. Because at the moment, the biggest content or the biggest focus on bacteriophages is how to bring them into the human medicine, into the clinical practice. But this is a long term process where it costs, not only from the financial point of view, but also from the economic, from the time point of view. It takes a lot of time.
Milan: It takes a lot of money to bring something new into the medical application. So we decided that we can make a soft [00:08:00] option, which would be a cosmetic product that will, that we can bring close to the people. People can find it. Look, microbiology is not just a weird science of weird people, but. There are some real products, some hard products that you can use, and it can help you to improve your, your skin, your feeling, and whatever. that was the main story behind the Fagocare, why we develop it. So at the moment, as you mentioned, Diana, exactly. So it's launched in the Czech and Slovak market, because we are a company based in the Czech Republic. It's a neighborhood, so we launched it here and we are now looking for the partners and for the ways how to launch it across the European Union.
Milan: And then maybe even far away.
Deanna: sure, sure. And what you're describing makes very good sense. For multiple reasons, right? We often see, um, companies use the cosmetic space, uh, for brand awareness or product, you know, technology awareness, um, for [00:09:00] consumer education and even thinking especially about, you know, microbiome skin care as, as this relates to, um, Um, I think there was a lot of consumer education that happened in terms of the gut microbiome that really helped, um, consumer adoption in terms of microbiome skin care in general and just starting to, um, familiarize everyone with the human microbiome and the potential we have, um, there.
Deanna: So I think this This approach in cosmetics, it makes very good sense and there'll be, there'll be a lot of, a lot of listeners who are, um, you know, developing technologies with wider applications, um, that are definitely doing similar work. Um, I'm wondering if there might be other skin issues, uh, that phage technology could be used, uh, to address.
Deanna: Are you looking at the potential here in terms of like eczema, rosacea, other similar issues, or because you mentioned acne, I believe.
Milan: Yes. Yes. Yes. Right. You are right. More or less, bacteriophages can help. [00:10:00] And now I'm speaking not only from the cosmetic point of view, but also from the medical point of view. Bacteriophages can help wherever you have problems with bacteria. And speaking these times, the biggest issue that we are facing regarding the bacterial infections is the antibiotic resistance. So one of the reasons why bacteriophages and you mentioned several companies that are working also with endolysins, which is very similar topic, uh, one of the reason why this is. So actually, at the moment is that we have an increasing problem, uh, with antibiotic resistance. It had simply the bacterial infections do not respond to antibiotic treatment.
Milan: It's absolutely normal phenomena, by the way, because if you have any kind of microorganism and you put it into the influence. Of something that is killing this microorganism in a few generations, this microorganism evolve, evolve, sorry, evolve, uh, resistances. So it's absolutely normal phenomena when you use antibiotics.
Milan: Unfortunately, [00:11:00] The resistance it over the antibiotics occurs sooner or later. Now we have something completely new. We have three pages. We have license. That is something that is new for the bacteria, but as well, it's all for the bacteria, because what we are what we are doing when we are using is that we are using natural enemies of the bacteria.
Milan: We are not evolving something new. We are not developing new chemicals. We are simply taking something. That is in the nature already that has been in the environment of bacteria for all the time, and we are using their natural enemies to eliminate the bacteria.
Deanna: so let me just make sure I understand correctly. Instead of synthesizing an ingredient, you're actually just isolating it from the natural environment.
Milan: absolutely true. Absolutely true. Because as soon as you have, as soon as you have a bacterial culture, sooner or later, the bacteriophages occurs in that culture. So you can just isolate them, multiply them, and uh, [00:12:00] this higher amount of oph phages, you put them back to the bacteria and then you have some kind of a battle.
Milan: And usually the oph pH is one. The advantage is that as the bacteria phages are living organism as well as bacteria are, it means that okay, bacteria can evolve resistancy. But the bacteriophages are evolving as well. So that means that simply if the, if some bacteriophage stop working, you can just isolate the new one and you can use the new one toward which one the bacteria is not resistant.
Milan: Yeah, so that's one of the biggest advantage of bacteriophages that simply you still have a new one, naturally occurring new ones that you can use against the bacteria. That's the first. And the second huge advantage of bacteriophages is that, as I told at the beginning, that they are targeting just their host's bacterial strains.
Deanna: right.
Milan: They do not do anything else. So, simply said, if you apply them to the infection, for example, in the, in the healthcare, if they find the infection, they will fight with [00:13:00] the infection. If they do not find the infection, they do nothing. And after some time, they they disintegrate or how to say properly. So, regarding these factors, you can use bacteriophages more or less everywhere where you have problems with the bacterial infections.
Milan: If you find the bacteriophages toward the bacteria that are causing the infections, you can use them and you can, you can try to use them to eliminate the infection. So, yes, we can speak about Rosaline. We can speak, for example, even about some some diseases like infected ones, diabetic food. Some, uh, some dermatitis caused by caused by bacteria and so on and so on.
Milan: But regarding the application of the cosmetics where we are, where we are targeting now with phagocare, it's much more about keeping the microbiome, skin microbiome balanced. Do not still have any overgrowth of the bacteria and so on.
Deanna: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And it's clear that, um, you know, there's a much larger [00:14:00] picture here than, than the one skincare product that you, you know, you're doing quite a lot, um, in the production of biotech products, um, for skincare and, and pharma as well. Um, but I'm hoping you can give us a little bit of backstory here.
Deanna: Um, FagoFarma is relatively new. Can you tell us, um, what inspired this company's origin? Where did it come from?
Milan: Well, uh, yes, you are right that phagopharm was established in, let's say, 2013, 2014. And the idea behind was that, uh, in the 70s, there was a bacteriophage treatment program. There was a registered drug product based on bacteriophages that was widely used in the former Czechoslovakia in the hospitals, and it was very well accepted.
Milan: It was, it has a good properties or it had good properties. And, uh, the physicians, they like it, but unfortunately, after the political changes, uh, in the 1990s, and after [00:15:00] also implementation of the European legislation, this product disappeared from the markets because simply it can't fulfill the requirements of the European Union and of the, of the kind of legislation, but the, but the tradition was here and the people working on that.
Milan: They were here as well. So they put together the knowledge and the experience and let's say seeing the potential in that because of the antibiotic resistance. They decided like, okay, let's go try it because it's not, it's nothing new in fact, because bacteriophages and it's, it's something that is here for, for even more than a longer time than antibiotics.
Milan: So, so they decided, let's take this technology that was here that was used, and let's try to modify it in the way so it can be accepted by the pharmaceutical legislation and cosmetic legislation and veterinary legislation and so on. And let's try to use it, at least in the cases where the antibiotics fail.
Milan: And. [00:16:00] It was successful in a way we are still at the very beginning. Uh, we are a small company, uh, doing much more research and development than the, than the manufacturing itself. But the main target that we have is that we would like to bring bacteria into the clinical practice and into the cosmetic practice and into the veterinary practice to use it.
Milan: We do not want to replace antibiotics, but we would like to use it where the antibiotics do not work and where antibiotics are not necessary. So that's, that's the biggest point that we have in our heads at the moment.
Deanna: Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's also interesting. Thank you for sharing that. Um, I mentioned earlier that I've noticed, um, there has been some reluctance to adopt phase technology in skincare and beyond. And as you pointed out, I mean, it's technology that we have had access to for well, well, longer than our lifetimes.
Deanna: Um, but I'm hoping you can maybe speak to some of the common concerns that [00:17:00] scientists or even corporate leaders might have here. Um, how can we put people's mind at ease about phage technology?
Milan: that's a good question. That's a very good question. Uh, I would say this, I would say it this way. As I said, bacteriophages Here for forever, because where you have bacteria, you have bacteria phages. They have been discovered, or they were discovered at the end of the 19th, 19th century, much more or less coincidentally, that there is something that is getting bacteria in the water.
Milan: And it was described as a bacteria phage, and it was more or less used. Uh, treating the bacterial infections until the time where Fleming invented penicillin. So he brought antibiotics into the world, and it was a miracle, by the way, because suddenly you had a truck that you could have used to treat people [00:18:00] from infections from when they died.
Milan: Millions of people died for the infections. It's something that can be treated pretty easily by, by penicillin
Deanna: sure.
Milan: and, and at this time, uh, bacteriophages stopped to be interesting for the people because penicillin was pretty easy to be manufactured. It was pretty easy to be spread out to millions of people and so on.
Milan: Uh,
Deanna: I'm wondering too if, if infection and disease at the time was harder to sort of diagnose with the specificity that bacteriophages would have been able to address. I'm just thinking out loud there. Hey.
Milan: that's a, that's a good honestly speaking. I think that microbiology at the time was really a newborn baby. With very limited possibilities and with very limited technologies and equipment. So it was, uh, yeah, it was much more guessing in some time, because even as a simple microscope for something that was kind of a miracle.
Milan: So,
Deanna: Mm hmm.
Milan: you compare the possibilities, the technological possibility that we have right now, and [00:19:00] then the scientists had. 100 years ago, it's a completely different world or
Milan: even completely different galaxy.
Deanna: Yeah. Yeah. It made very good sense to go with the
Deanna: penicillin.
Milan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was, it was, it was, much easier because because simply what we have now, we have now DNA analysis.
Milan: So, when we have a bacteriophage or even a bacteria, we can scan. All the genome, we can, we can look to the genome, we can look at the properties of the strain. We can isolate them, we can observe them, not only using the optical microscope, but also the electronic microscope. We can do more or less whatever you want to analyze what we have on the Petri dish.
Milan: But when you look 100 years ago, what they had more or less nothing, just a magnificent glass. Or slightly better magnification. And that was also they were just doing it like, okay, or not. Okay. And that was all. But so that I think that that's the biggest reason why this microbiological technologies and this microbiological products, how to say, [00:20:00] has a huge Renaissance these time, because suddenly we have a technology that allow us to use it properly.
Milan: Penicillin was pretty easy in the 20s or 30s when it was invented, simply because it was nothing complicated to produce, to pack, to distribute, to, to give it to the people, but, but bacteriophages and proteins and lysins, it was something completely new. It was on the edge of the science and
Deanna: and we can see now with, with more
Milan: that's
Deanna: and confidence, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Milan: No, no, no. Yeah, you are, you are completely, you are completely right that this, this allows us now what it allows to not only to use it, but also to develop it to predict behavior, for
Milan: example. So we do not, at the time, we do not need to test, for example, the bacteriophage toward the bacteria, but regarding the properties from the DNA analysis, we can predict Whether the phage will work to the bacteria and vice versa.
Milan: So [00:21:00] that's. That's kind of a
Deanna: Yeah, no, it's very exciting. I think it's super cool. Thank you for sharing all of that. Um, you know, I'm always hoping that the conversations we have here on the podcast are a source of information. Um, maybe also a little inspiration for the Cosmo Factory community of listeners. Um, so with that in mind, before we wrap up, I would love to hear a bit about the stage of business that FagoFarma is in.
Deanna: You mentioned earlier, um, You know, your sort of aspirations to grow, but I'm wondering, like, you have a company at this stage, how do you decide what partnerships are right as you expand your business? Maybe there are, you know, other companies listening, right, at a similar stage and are trying to make these decisions.
Deanna: Does it make sense to grow, you know, FoggoCare, uh, As a product line and look for like international retail distribution. Does it make sense for you to partner with other brands and actually manufacture skin care? Does it make sense for you to license this technology out? Um, and maybe you. Partner with legacy cosmetic ingredient makers [00:22:00] and let them handle it.
Deanna: How do you, how do you make this decision? What's, what's next? Yeah,
Milan: Thank you so much for this question, Diana. Maybe in the answer, I will maybe shot myself in my leg a little bit at the moment. But, you know, I have to say that FagoFarma is a really small company. We are not any huge, uh, corporate or something like that. We are a company. Fully based in Prague in the Czech Republic with few laboratories enthusiastic people. So, we are just a small group of enthusiastic people who like to bring something into the real world. So, we are mainly oriented on services and on the production itself. We have labs, we know how to work in them, we know what to produce, we know what to develop.
Milan: And how to, how to make it working. We are not focusing on product sales itself. Like we are, we will never, well, never not in the close future. We will, we will not have a distributor network, our own [00:23:00] one. So, what we are doing at the moment is that we have a great expertise in something that is new and that can be used.
Milan: In different fields, like in cosmetics and beauty or in or in medical, we know how to make it into this field. We are not just the scientists who know how to do it technically, but we also know what does it mean to turn the result of the research and development into the product that you can simply sell to the market.
Milan: And we would be happy to have a partner or partners that will help us to go further, to go with the sales, to take it And to say, okay, you will manufacture it for us and we will be the one will be responsible for spreading it all across the globe and bring it to the billions of people so they can be happy and they will not need antibiotics anymore.
Milan: And so on. So, and we will save the world. So, so, so regarding that, as I said, we are not focused on the sales. We are not focused on, uh, on earning money on on [00:24:00] on the. Packaging of the product, but we are focused on development on, uh, scale up transfer from development to the manufacturing and to the, to the practice.
Milan: And we are looking for the potential partner or partners would help who would continue on that. So we'll help with the, with the, with the introduction of this to the,
Deanna: right, right. Oh, interesting. No, thank you for sharing that. And I, your remarks there reminded me of something you told me, um, in an earlier conversation that we had, um, And I won't be able to repeat it. So I'm hoping you, um, I hope I'm hoping what I say will remind you of what it is, but there's something particular about the technology you've developed.
Deanna: Um, within, I think you said within the European union that you, your company is somehow distinctive for its manufacturing processes or for the, the sort of, uh, bacteriophages that you're working with.
Milan: Well, uh, you mean from the regulatory [00:25:00] point of view?
Milan: Uh, or yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, there is a situation in the European Union at the moment that EMA, which is the European Medical Agency, is preparing a new mono, uh, about bacterial phases. So it will be a document describing. If you would like to use bacteria pages in drug production in the medical production, how to do it properly?
Milan: Because, uh, roughly said, uh, if you are producing drugs in general, you have 2 possibilities. What you can do 1st is that you can simply follow the huge document that is called pharmacopoeia, which is a. Regulatory document describing how to produce, what to produce, what to control, what you need to check, what you need to take care of, and so on, so on.
Milan: The second possibility is that you bring something new, but then you need to validate, validate, validate everything, validate the production, the analytical methods, and you need to generate tons and tons of data, supporting that what you are doing, you are doing the right way. [00:26:00] And so that was the situation of bacteria pages, uh, to these times, because simply they were not described.
Milan: So we needed to develop the methods and production and everything like, like, by our set by ourselves. There were some, let's say, common common applications, but in general, uh, we needed to prove everything at the moment. EMA monography, which means that we will have a unified document valid for all the European Union describing if you would like to make bacteriophages as a medical product for the clinical use, you will follow this monography and it will be accepted by all the authorities that it is done in the right way, which will be a huge step forward for all this field because it's a framework that will help manufacturers process.
Milan: How to do, how to, how to manufacture and produce these. It will have the clinicians, how to apply it to the patients. It will have the regulatory bodies, how to approve it, and how [00:27:00] to, how to check and approve these products for the application. And also, it's a good guideline for the investors that will potentially give the money into this field that, okay, here is a clear regulatory framework under which it's pretty clear how to bring these products to the market.
Milan: So this document, this simple document, something that I believe can move the page. Generally, the phage application, not only the phage therapy, but in general, the phage application, like, by a huge
Deanna: No, it sounds like more than a benchmark for sure.
Deanna: Um, very useful. Yes. Yes. Well, Milan, I have to thank you for speaking with me on such a specialized topic. It was very nice to have you as a guest on the Cosmo Factory podcast. Thank you.
Milan: Thank you so much for invitation, [00:28:00]