Rapid-Repair

Lionel King: Well, good evening and welcome to everyone who's come to the Rapid Repair chat room. My name is Lionel King, I will be your moderator for this session. I'll just go through a brief description of how this will work if you haven't figured it out already, and then we'll go to answering the questions that many of you have already asked. I am effectively to be your voice. The questions that you have and, or will enter via the web page you've just come from and the Q&A forum section. That's the way that you address questions to this team and I will float them to the team, and they will respond and then we'll move on. There are opportunities to put your hand up and doing other things and so, you can do that, but I'll ignore it, so please do use the Q&A form, because that way we capture all the questions. Without further ado, what I'd like to do to start off is to introduce you to the team, and I'll let them tell you a little bit about themselves and the technology, and then we'll go to the questions. If I could start with Rosy.

Rosemary Craig: Thanks, Lionel. I'm Rosemary Craig, I'm a GP. I've been working clinically for more than 25 years, and it was my original innovation that started pulling the rest of the team together. This is Gerard.

Gerard Chris: I'm Gerard Chris, I'm CEO of Repair, and apart from helping Rosie with this project, I also tinker with a bit of music in the background. Now, over to Nela.

Nela: Hi, I'm Nela, I'm Chief Scientific Officer in Rapid Repair. Also, I'm a biomedical scientist trying to apply my biomedical knowledge in Rapid Repair. In my background, I play tennis and basketball, whoever loves that will remember me. [laugh] Thank you. Rosie, back to you, or to Lionel?

Gerard: Back to Lionel.

Lionel: Back to me. We already have a series of questions at it, and the one that is most popular so far-- We'll start with that one, is this. I would like to understand how the dressing is attached to the wound, and whether it actively holds the cut sections together? It goes on to say, I have previous experience in micro-surgical tissue repair and would be interested in chatting with you. We'll come back to that. Rosie, would you like to address that?

Rosemary: Certainly. Our dressing doesn't attempt to hold the edges of the wound together, so we can use something simple like surgical tape Steri-strips, or it can be used as well as stitches. Our dressing projects into the wound. It projects into the dermis layer of the wound and enables healing by altering what is happening to the signals for the molecules.

Lionel: Okay, well, thank you for that. The next question that I have here is, how many clinical studies have you done, and how much investment are you looking in for?

Rosemary: Well, I'll start answering that in that, we've done a pilot study in 30 participants who are humans, having skin cancers cut out. Their wounds were stitched closed, and we used the Rapid Repair compared to an inert control to test what happened to the wound. We're now planning further studies, which I'll hand over to Nela for.

Nela: We started initial animal studies, this is also undergoing process at this moment, and also we have further studies planned. This would include extending additional claims that our product is providing for the process of wound healing. Basically, by clinical studies, we are extending our urge to provide additional evidence for a future user of the product. As Rosy mentioned, on the human trials, our result showed that there was a huge increase in the healing process. Basically, you would have 90% faster healing as a result of the application of our device. Also, it wasn't only faster, the scarring was minimized. This is now going extending traditional trials, and human trials and animal trials are going in parallel as I said, advantages always exist in the case of animal trials, because you have less variables present when your testing is done under these circumstances. For that reason, a combination of trials will be done in parallel in the future. Thank you.

Gerard: To answer the last part of that question, at the moment, we're not looking for any funding. [laughter]

Rosemary: Funding for the moment.

Gerard: At the moment we have enough funds to get us through our next set of trials, and we also have enough funds for the initial production run of the product.

Rosemary: Just one extra thing. Part of the reason why we're doing this trials is because of a few case studies, and the case studies were just so remarkable, the clinical outcome that occurred that we're doing these trials to verify in a proper scientific manner.

Lionel: Very good. Thank you for that. The following question that I think Nela, you've partly answered, that you maybe want to expand on, the question has asked, why a horse first? Because it worked best with it or is it a lucrative market, or what?

Nela: [laughs] There are a couple of advantages, but thanks for giving this idea, and because Rosie is the one who loves horses [laugh] . I'm joking. That wasn't the particular reason, but there are pros and cons in treating different animals. In the case of horses, they have certain advantages comparing to maybe smaller animals. As we did some animal trials with a veterinarian, and they were able to provide us with some guidance in terms of which animals would be better in terms of the healing process using our device. I will give that info to Rosie so she could expand this answer, please.

Rosemary: Thank Nela. A big part of the reason for going with horses as earlier dropped is not that the horses go out buying things, but it's because leg wounds in horses are such a major problem. These wounds can take months to heal, and even after spending months with doing daily dressings, the owners often end up with a horse that is too disabled for them to use, because of the scar outcomes. The difference in the wound repair process in horses was phenomenal, it was cutting months down to one to two days. That's why it would be really good to show in horses because it is so obvious.

Gerard: Because we identified that pinpoint from a marketing point of view, we already have AQUAvets who are very keen to start using our products, so they are proving to be a potentially lucrative early adopted to market.

Lionel: Terrific. Now, I might change the pace slightly. The oldest question next that we have is, it say's, "Great pitch, well done, love the product, just wondering why green? Have you considered other colors?"

Gerard: Yes, we have considered other colors, and we have had a robust discussion within the team. The original color of green was simply because, from a medical viewpoint, just the psychology of the color green, it tends to be associated with calmness and healing. We do have a gold version of the product that we're working on, and there are some other changes in the color that we're considering as well. It doesn't have to be green, that's just the initial form of our product.

Lionel: Okay, very good.

Nela: If I could add, I was more for orange, because that my suggestion, I love orange, but anyway, it's what Gerard just explained, it absolutely makes sense, and we need to start with the most appropriate color, and that was green, but it doesn't exclude that other colors will be included in the future.

Lionel: Perfect. Next question. What's the ballpark cost comparison with current treatments?

Gerard: Well, I'm probably best suited to answer that one. We've looked at the costs associated with standard gluing closure. For example, the amount of material that would be required to put five sutures into a wound, and looked at the cost of sutures, looked at the cost of local anesthetic, looked at the cost if it was a surgical wound under general anesthetic, it may be closed using staples, or even looking at the use of glues, for example. Looking at all the current traditional gluing closure methods, and we worked out what the cost of those would be, and so we were able to position our product at that same price point. It would be price-neutral with all the added advantages that we've already talked about, so faster healing and the minimal scar outcome.

Rosemary: Another additional price advantage is that it takes less than a half a minute to apply because we're just applying it to the outside of another surgical-type dressing, and then if you're bandaging it or putting tape on to hold it in place, and that takes less than half a minute instead of taking 10 to 15 minutes to suture a wound and have a local anesthetic working and all that sort of thing because it's kinder to have local anesthetic work before you put stitches in.

Lionel: Just a little comment or a bit of making hygiene, some people may be entering this chat room from other meeting rooms or coming in late. Some of the questions might already be answered. If that's the case we may or may not get around to answering some of the more pressing ones again. If not, it is possible to-- You will be able to download a recording of this session and go through it sometime, it'll be available sometime next week, so let's say, you understand. Now, they're taking separate questions. Which Uni are you from?

Nela: We are coming from Southern Cross University. I work at Southern Cross University. We have pioneered from this university and Rosie could explain where is she working. [laughs]

Rosemary: I've been working in rural medicine for a long time, and I returned into the Southern Cross University to work in the health clinic to support the research. Fortunately, the head of the clinical school was very supportive of the project. We're now developing collaborations with the University of Queensland.

Nela: Yes. In addition, yes, we are expanding our collaborations with other institutions.

Lionel: Now, we'll go back to the technology. Then the next question is, what is the active ingredient that causes a more rapid repair? The reduction in the scar, has it been statistically demonstrated, the difference between? Is the difference consistent and significant? Are there any scientifically published data that might data-back yourself up?

Rosemary: We haven't published the data yet. I have presented this data to the Australian Society of Biophysics. The active proponents of the wound dressing is a type of magnetic field which is very specific in aiming to imitate conditions of intact skin. There's been a lot of data from other researchers who have looked at different effects of magnetic fields in the bodies and looked for any sort of adverse effects sort negative outcomes. As an outcome from using these types of fields and the data is very supportive that this is a safe and effective mode.

Nela: Way to apply on the wound. That's one of the things that our doctors are currently in the pre-publication stage. The manuscript is written. We need to be careful due to patent requirements and IP requirements around this, how much we could release in terms of how this all works, but it will be published. As I said, in terms of methodology, sometimes you need to be careful in the way how you explain, but it is under TGA. We got TGA approval. That's number one, so it could be applied on humans. Another thing which I wanted to add regarding statistical significance, usually wounds treatment expects that wounds, the stitches would be removed, for example, after seven, after 14 days. One or two weeks, usually takes a while. In the case of the application of our medical device, you would have this healing process being so much quicker. A majority, around 80% of wounds had the stitches removed after just a couple of days. It was within three days, 80% of stitches were removed. This is very, very significant. It can't be more significant.

Gerard: Yes. We also had of the 38 in the trial. None of the wounds opened immediately after the stitches were removed. We did have one patient who suffered a trauma, later in the day when a child jumped on their leg and it caused the wound to re-open but, that is--

Nela: Well, nothing is bulletproof.

Gerard: Yes, and it was outside of what we were doing. The other thing is we then showed photos from our trial to a panel of 17 blinded surgeons and GPs and dermatologists. They wrote that the wounds were only one day old as more than eight days old. Yes, we've got some good data around the technology.

Nela: That is like visual assessment but the-

Gerard: Yes, based on their experience of wounds.

Nela: It was very good earlier than commonly done, in 80% or more cases. That's really strong evidence of the speeding process of healing.

Lionel: Thank you. Now, marketing questions. Let's start with you, Gerard. How do you plan to market your product so that you can be included in every first aid kit and reach every GP, vet, and every hospital ED the country/the world?

Gerard: At this stage, a bit about the first aid kit, it will probably be a lot further down the road. At this stage, we really are looking at it being used by clinicians. We've already talked previously about the veterinary market and the application with the early adopters in treating leg wounds on horses, which is quite a significant market. We're then looking at, we're going to do some studies within emergency departments to prove its efficacy within that part of the hospital system. We're also planning some trials in non-surgical wounds, so you can close the wounds after surgery rather than having to use staples or stitches, which are currently being used. That will provide the data within those particular markets that will open up. Like any other start-up, it's just a matter of getting traction within those markets, having the evidence, having the data and people then knowing that if that's available and that's what they will want to be used because it will become the gold standard of use for wound closure.

Lionel: I think you may have answered this but I'll go ahead and ask you. How far away are you from the market? Is it something that a consumer will be able to use?

Gerard: We're planning, our current business plan has a target of the launch of the product around October or no later than November this year. We're just in the final stages of testing some samples and the product will be ready to roll, well, within four, five months. Sorry. What was the other part of that question?

Lionel: Will it be available for the consumer?

Gerard: The consumer, well, at this stage, no. We're keeping away from the consumer market, simply because as Rosie would be able to attest, as a clinician. If you're closing a wound that would normally need stitches, particularly if you're thinking about in an emergency department, you really still need a clinician to assess that wound to make sure that there isn't any underlying damage to the nerves or tendons or deeper structures that may need clinical intervention. The idea of a consumer just slapping the dressing on, when they should really be consulting a professional is, at the moment, it's-- While there may be a Band-Aid version of this down the track, it's not something we're concentrating on, at this stage.

Lionel: Cool. Let me see. Now we have, what type of wounds has this already been tested on? Again, when you started this did you get any clinical trials on humans?

Rosemary: We've tested it on accidental lacerations and it did an incredibly good job in a very short time. We've tested it on the excision wounds after skin cancer has been removed, and these are high tensions skin wounds because a defect of the skin is being created by cutting out one section. That situation of testing on excision wounds was really testing for the wound strength as well as how it modified the scar. We would anticipate that postoperative wound, surgical ones where a cut has been made in the skin, that in order to access the tissues underneath, would heal in the same manner as a laceration because they haven't got a high tension. We haven't explored this in ulcers yet. We've been concentrating on the more linear wounds because the resolve is so remarkable in that setting.

Nela: That doesn't exclude that it wouldn't work in some other type of wounds. We just are going through this process step-by-step. Linear wound, as I mentioned, are in the first target, and this is why we are doing all these different trials to allow evidence to provide security for people to be able to know how to use it properly.

Lionel: Makes sense. Again, this is probably recapping, but why not? Are you targeting clinical usage? As in, hospital or unskilled application to reduce hospital is at stake? Where is--

Rosemary: Yes, totally clinical use because these are full-thickness skin wounds that are sealed without wound dressing. Those could be far more serious wounds that, because of the damage to the tissues underneath, and so these wounds need to be clinically evaluated first.

Gerard: The only difference there is that we've been in discussions in regards to potential military use. There may be again, I wouldn't be someone who hasn't had any training, but the opportunity of this is as a dressing that could be carried in combat situations.

Lionel: I'll just remind people, there have been a couple of people asking questions that want to get in contact with you and I guess they should. It will be possible if you download the event, but what I understand that it has the contact details for all the teams so you'll be able to send an email or whatever and follow-up, and throw lots of money at you, I suppose.

Rosemary: Yes, and buy the dressing.

Gerard: The website's live so that's repair.com.au is an easy way to contact us as well.

Lionel: If I can just ask, you've said that you're not looking for money, but what are the ways in which people who are tuning in this could actually support you or see you further on your way?

Rosemary: One important way to support us is to create clinical connections with key opinion leaders. People who would be the plastic surgeons that everyone looks up to, the surgeons who are more likely to be listened to among their peers, those sort of people, just so that we can make those connections and help propel our innovation through the clinical space.

Gerard: We're aware that in the end, we are a small company and we really are a startup. We are looking at potential partners, be they're distributors, or any of the large wound dressing manufacturers, if anyone has connections to those sorts of organizations, then reach out and talk to us because we're looking at how we've licensed this to-- While we're entering the domestic market to proof of concept and the marketing of the product within a small market, clearly, there's a worldwide demand and a worldwide market that can be addressed, and we're looking at partners that would be able to take that to that roadmap.

Rosemary: My motivation is to really get this product replacing the trauma of stitching children in emergency departments, because I've done that for 25 years, and now I know it's entirely unnecessary.

Lionel: Very motivating.

Nela: That so true. Just to add to this question about how people could support us, we are raising awareness, we are aware that this is a new product. This is a new way of treating wounds. For us, we want people to start using it, of course, through our guidance. We could talk to you, dermatologists, our earlier doctors, our dermatologists, the skin surgeons. We have also vets being interested. We want for people to come and talk to us and potentially use our product. This is what we would be very interested and you give us their feedback. Would you like to add something Gerard, Rosemary about that?

Gerard: No, that's good.

Lionel: Perfect. Now, I don't think we've actually seen the product yet, have we? I think you do have something that you specialize. Can you tell us some?

Nela: Let's do it. Let's do it.

Rosemary: Well, it's a homemade package of our product.

Gerard: That's the prototype of our packaging.

Rosemary: It's a prototype where we can pull it out, it's on a roll. It's very flexible. It's a silicon base, and it's easy to cut. This can just sit over a wound. I've pre-prepared a wound. This is only drawn on. It's not a real one. [laughter]

Gerard: You're spoiling the effect. Al, I cut myself.

Rosemary: It's so simple that you just need to use a dressing tape to stabilize it. It's like putting Steri-strips on or a Micropore tape, or a Fixomull, any of those brands. Then you place the wound dressing over the top and hold it in place with some more tape. Normally, the reason why we don't use Steri-strips on the deep wounds is because, Steri-strips won't stay on long enough for the wound to repair itself. Because this dressing modifies the tissue repair, it only needs to stay in place for a much shorter amount of time within 24 hours really.

Gerard: Thank you, doctor. [laughter]

Rosemary: I'm afraid the first time I used it, it was only six hours and it worked really well, but we're doing 24 hours in excision wounds because they're under tension.

Lionel: Also, Nela, you're talking about trying to get more exposure. I understand you've had a bit of media interest just lately.

Nela: Yes, that's correct. I'm happy to share and just yesterday, I was on TV believe it or not. Yes. The second time this year I was saying, "Oh my goodness." First time was with Tennis final Australian-- [laughter] That was just three seconds. This was a bit longer, so what I will do, I will just share video and you will be able to see. It was really a great story. The News reporter was fantastic. I'm hoping that you will enjoy it too. Let's start. [video playing]

Speaker 1: Tonight we are going to show you the local medical breakthrough healing common cuts and wounds fast.

Speaker 2: It Works on anyone, so it's perfect for seniors and [audio dropout]

Nela: Can start off for weeks, you could heal a wound in a matter of days.

Sally Gyte: Revolutionizing wound treatment to Southern Cross University research team, inventing the high-tech Rapid Repair dressing.

Nela: Allow 90% faster healing process is even-- We managed to do that in 24 hours.

Sally: The patented technology works on all skin types, allowing for better care and faster healing of cuts especially helpful on aged skin, and could even help injured pets and animals.

Nela: Our benefit from this product is that you have less scarring.

Sally: The product is so out-of-this-world. NASA is showing an interest to launch the award-winning dressing into outer space.This type of technology also has the potential to heal wounds on diabetes patients as well as bedsores, and skin cancer wounds, improving the quality of life for sufferers. The painless non-invasive dressing costing similar to other medical dressings. In the future, the super Bandaid could replace the need for stitches, staples, or glue, all together. Sally Gyte, 9 Gold Coast News.

Nela: Okay, so I'll stop sharing. Exciting. Amazing. Everyone is saying "hello" to me all around the world. [laughter]

Lionel: It's lovely. It's nice to see the attention. I understand you're getting some radio coverage as well, is that right?

Rosemary: We've had a local radio station which is "Triple Z" on the North, in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. I've also got a radio interview plan tomorrow for ABC Gulf Coast.

Lionel: Good luck with that.

Nela: Sorry, just to add also another media exposure, we were also in Gold Coast Bulletin. You could read the story about, Rapid Repair wound dressing success story and how NASA is interested in our product, also in this newspaper, just from yesterday.

Lionel: Perhaps, you could tell us some more about NASA and what your engagement with them has been?

Gerard: Through the ON Accelerate Program and for those who have seen the pictures tonight, then you would have seen Chris from Space Services Australia. Chris was heading over to America before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. There was a competition that was being run by NASA. To cut a long story short, we filled in an application on Chris's encouragement, and then when the pandemic broke out we thought, well, we didn't think much about it at all. Suddenly, we got an email from NASA and they had decided to run the competition online which of course then made it very easy for us to participate because we're able to prerecord a three-minute pitch and then send it through to NASA. It still meant we had to be up in the early hours of the morning to answer questions. A bit like tonight's session with the ON Accelerate Program. We had our pitch. We're up against a number of different teams around the world and of course the US. We actually won our pitch competition. That was the San Francisco leg. There's about six to seven legs that are run across the country across America throughout the year. We're now moving into the semi-final phase which will be held in August. Again, we're assuming at the stage, that would be a virtual conference. It's run by NASA iTech and the program is called Ignite the Night and its where NASA is looking for technologies a little bit outside the box that they're going to be useful for them because they are looking for technologies that's going to help them move to mars. Clearly something like our dressing which has a very long shelf life can work in zero gravity or microgravity is something they're really interested in. It was a great opportunity for us. It was an opportunity that really came about because of our involvement in the ON Program.

Lionel: Well, good luck with the semifinals and hopefully the finals.

Gerard: Thank you.

Lionel: It will be all in the middle of the night, I suppose.

Rosemary: Yes, of course.

Gerard: Yes. It was about 3 a.m start for us. [laughter]

Lionel: Can I perhaps ask you? You've demonstrated how the dressing goes or how the tape goes over the uses in dressing. Are there any materials that won't work through? Are there restrictions on what wound dressing you work with?

Rosemary: We think that the thickness of the dressing that's directly over the wound could affect our dressing. We haven't been using it through a pad dressing. We usually use it directly over a surgical tape. I think that it would probably work well through a hydrogel type of dressing and the other styles of dressings like the silver dressings we haven't tested at all. We still need to explore this a little bit further.

Lionel: I think we have some new questions coming into the room. Welcome if there's somebody who's just joining us. Some of these questions have been addressed earlier but I think it's okay to ask them again. The question is how is this different to butterfly band-aids?

Rosemary: Well, butterfly band-aids only hold the edges of the skin together, and when dressing doesn't attempt to hold the edges of the skin together at all. We are projecting a field into the dressing, into the wound I mean so that the wound is able to heal itself far more efficiently. Does so in far less time with far less materials and it's entirely painless with how it does it.

Gerard: Yes. A butterfly dressing is merely trying to hold the edges of the wound together so the body will eventually heal. Whereas our technology actually aims at changing the way that the molecules are aligning within the damaged tissue. No other wound-closure technique currently attempts to not only engineer at that level.

Nela: And promote healing process through that.

Gerard: Yes. Basically, to trick the skin into thinking that it's still intact so that the molecules flowing into the wound will align as they would in intact skin.

Lionel: Thanks for that. Another new question. Can this be used post-surgery?

Rosemary: Yes. We believe it can be used post-surgery. It could be on the external side of another type of post-surgical dressing like an offsite-type dressing, which is a plastic film dressing. It would only need to stay on for a number of hours. It wouldn't really need to stay on for 24 hours because a post-operative wound is an incision wound and it doesn't have as much tension as the types of wounds whereas skin cancer has been cut out which was the one that we found that we could use it for 24 hours.

Gerard: The other thing there is while we have an initial form of our product that we're taking to market, we're also looking at producing other forms of the product that putting-- At some stage in the not too distant future we'll look at a sterile version of the device that could be used like any other dressing in a surgical setting at the moment.

Rosemary: At the Southern Cross University we're also developing an anti-biofilm coating for our device. It could be used on potentially infected wounds to help disperse the bacteria. Because anti-biofilms are a way that the bacteria can't become resistant to it is not like you've got to have the right antibiotic for the wound. It's an anti-biofilm so the bacteria just move away.

Nela: Just disperse it through the process. We want to combine our products. This is why in potential future we are interested in collaborating with people who are having maybe some overlapping technology that would even speed up further process of healing or potentially address other problems. For that reason, research and development is in top priority of our team to help as I said and apply this technology in different settings.

Lionel: You're not looking at one product. You've got a runway of technologies you're looking to incorporate?

Rosemary: That's right. We've also--

Nela: Also, long-term plans.

Rosemary: We do have other applications in the scheme that we're developing. We've actually even-- We're even looking at developing other products for other connective tissues. It's really interesting stuff.

Lionel: Watch the space.

Gerard: Pretty much so.

Lionel: A few more questions. Have you spoken with some of the key industry players that supply wound dressings about licensing?

Rosemary: We haven't established a dialogue with any of those key industry players yet. We would be keen to. If anyone can enable that conversation, we would be eternally grateful.

Gerard: We're at that point where we've started to make those contacts but we haven't really engaged in those conversations yet. We're aware, we are very keen to get that process going because we know it's not going to happen overnight. We need to start those conversations because there will be a fair amount of discussion that would need to happen. We are keen to look at licensing to allowed us to invest in manufacturing.

Lionel: That's great. One of our attendees asks I had a surgery and I'm tingling and lots of sensations still two years. Would this help? Secondly, to that question, what is the percent gain in the reduction of scar tissue?

Rosemary: Percent gain? I'm not sure exactly what they mean by that. We have tested this dressing on people who are very, very prone to bad scars. You might be aware that our indigenous population in Australia tend to form keloid scars which are large invasive scars. These are infused by the culture for ceremonial purposes. However, they can be very uncomfortable. They're itchy, they continue to grow, they're difficult to treat because even by cutting them out or treating with radiotherapy or injecting them with steroids, they're very difficult scars to treat. We found in our pilot study some of the patients had an indigenous background and they had a remarkable difference in the amount of scar. The picture that we showed in our video where one half of the wound had a lumpy scar and the other half had a tiny little thin scar was from one of those indigenous people. She doesn't want to have any other things cut out that don't use our wound dressing.

Gerard: Just to clarify that point. The scar outcome was something that was-- It wasn't an initial part of the pilot study. We were looking just merely at wound closure and the time taken to close the wound. It was in examining the wounds at the end or through the study that we realized that there was also this additional-- Our dressing was also minimizing the scar involved. That's something that we will be really quantifying within our next set of clinical trials.

Rosemary: I actually had the opportunity of seeing that long term scar outcome because I was still that person's GP. By being a GP, you see someone within 10, 20, 30 years of their life and you can get that longitudinal experience that a person doing research wouldn't see. They only see someone while they're doing the research project.

Nela: That's true. [laughs]

Rosemary: I've got an advantage because I've been with a group. It starts with the GP advantage.

Lionel: Good to know you've got one customer who won't accept anything else. [laughter]

Rosemary: A couple of others who're really GPs actually but none of them are being quite so adamant at refusing to have anything cut out.

Lionel: Just one thing, Rosie. Part of that question was about a tingling.

Rosemary: Yes. The tingling suggests there's some sort of nerve involvement. It might be a result of the scar. It could be a result of the damage to the nerve and we haven't tested it on long terms scars that are already in existence. We've just been using and dressing on a fresh wound and changing the scar outcome and we haven't tested it in nerve injuries. I would be really interested to see what can happen, but we haven't tested it yet.

Gerard: That's more research now.

Nela: Yes. That's more research for us. As I said--

Rosemary: CSIRO is going to be busy now.

Nela: We're going step by step. You can't claim everything from one clinical trial. We're targeting specific questions that our market is interested in and specifically patients are interested in and we are providing evidence, based on that.

Gerard: Rosie did have a patient though that reported that the scar that had been created with rapid repair was their only scar that wasn't itchy.

Rosemary: Yes. That was another indigenous person but they weren't quite so insistent that they-- I didn't want to rapid repair for every single wound from then on.

Lionel: Okay, that's good. Can you please explain the process in which you designed this? Where did you start?

Rosemary: Where did I start? I started it in my mind. It was a combination of a light bulb moment thinking, "I can notice something going on here." Then doing a lot of reading to explore why could something like this be going on. Having a creative imagination but then a clinical made. Then I was able to formulate the prototype and when I had the opportunity, I tested it and it was on myself because it's really easy. You don't have to go through ethics committees to test it on yourself and it was a massive result. It was so incredible. It was a full-thickness skin wound on my face that's nearly two inches long and you basically can't see where it is, I'm sure.

Gerard: No. Well, not on the Zoom meeting anyway.

Rosemary: Not on the Zoom meeting, but people really had pushed to see it when they're standing in front of me too.

Gerard: It was one of those situations where Rosie, being a solo rural GP, she was in a situation where she already had done a fair amount of research in this area, but unfortunately, she suffered an injury. Being the only doctor around, she decided she had to treat herself. She took upon and used the innovation that she'd been thinking about and she was so blown away by the result that she then decided that we had then start conducting trials. Now, here we are.

Rosemary: Yes, because it went from a gaping wound where you could see the muscle underneath to a white scar in six hours.

Gerard: Without any stitches.

Rosemary: Without any stitches. No staples, no glue, no nothing and it was totally painless.

Gerard: Because I'm not good at stitches. [laughter]

Rosemary: He can't even look at someone having stitches. [laughter]

Gerard: Anyway, that probably answers that question well. [laughter]

Lionel: That's quite a story.

Rosemary: It blew me away.

Lionel: Then there's no need to get close to the camera to show us the evidence. [laughter]

Rosemary: I'm not going any closer to the camera.

Lionel: We accept the story. How long has this taken you to develop?

Rosemary: I've been exploring the research part-time for a really long time. It's around about 10 years that sort of thing, but after I had the innovative step and tested the prototype because I was in a situation of being a solo rural GP and that's not really set up for doing widespread clinical trials. I got a bit of a time lag in there too and because I was doing a pilot study from general practice and I'd probably only see one excision case a week or a fortnight. That was quite a slow process as well, but since we've been on the ON program first of all the ON Prime program and now, the ON Accelerate program, this has fast-tracked big time.

Gerard: Yes. In the last 12 months, we've gone from having completed the clinical trial and slowly pulling the manuscript together at that stage to be picked up by the CSIRO program and to go through ON Prime and now ON Accelerate. It really has accelerated. The fact that we're now only a few months away from launching the product, we're being listed on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods. We've identified our early adopters in the marketplace and we now got the funding behind us to run our next set of clinical trials. It's full steam ahead.

Nela: We have to acknowledge CSIRO for helping us there because this program, ON Prime, ON Accelerate, is amazing. It facilitates a link between academia and innovation and it really helped us and I know other people who went through this program are really thrilled by all theme ON Prime team. Thank you again, if you are hearing us.

Gerard: Otherwise, we wouldn't have met Lionel.

Nela: Lionel too [laughter] yes. Then it includes everyone.

Lionel: There you go. Swings and roundabouts. Next question, what is the bandage made of and how does that make the skin react to it? Why did you cover it but a clear shot of a few people in the room and it's probably worth revisiting?

Gerard: It's a silicone-based product. We don't want to go into exactly what's embedded in the silicone because that's our special source, but being a silicone-based, it's-- No, Rosie can probably talk more about the allergic aspect.

Rosemary: It's a very flexible soft type of low allergy product, but we're not using in direct contact with the skin at the moment anyway. We're using an external to a surgical type dressing. The surgical type dressing is aiming to hold the edges of the skin in place while our device projects into the wound and enables the molecules to align like they would in intact skin.

Gerard: For those who've joined late. Here's another product show.

Rosemary: Super flexible. Just cut the length that you need. If you can go to a little measuring guide on there because--

Gerard: Waste not, want not.

Rosemary: Waste not, want not.

Gerard: We hope that answers that question.

Lionel: You guys have thought of everything. I imagine that maybe the rapid does make the skin react to it was not only an allergy question, but does why does it actually cause the repair to be accelerated. You might want to revisit that one?

Gerard: I'll have a go with this one.

Rosemary: Yes, you can.

Gerard: It's recreating the physical properly so that the molecules flowing into the damaged skin align as if they would in undamaged skin. That's the nub of the technology. We're making the skin feel as if it's not wounded. We're aiming for the molecules to be able to align as they would in intact skin.

Lionel: Okay. I hope Rosie doesn't look awed with that answer, so I guess you did okay.

Nela: From a scientific point of view, this is how we think it works. Providing virtual scaffold and it's something that is logical based on scientific reasoning and research done. Further studies we're doing, we'll include biopsy of the area that was exposed to regular stitching and plus stitching with application of our product to provide further evidence of how these molecules are aligning. Basically, further evidence we will provide. We have a clinical evidence that healing is faster and the scarring is minimized. Further evidence that we are going to provide with additional work and that we, as I said, we are doing at the moment will give us a Nobel Prize. I'm joking, maybe. [laughter] To provide further evidence, in some way we are revolutionizing the process of healing because it was done for ages, 1,000 years. My team found information that it was in ancient Egypt stitching was done. Now we are promoting a different way of wound healing. We are promoting this natural process through providing, as I said, a virtual scaffold to molecules. Further evidence, experimental work we are doing, we will give you the papers that you could read to learn more about the mechanism. Clinical output is evidenced so faster better healing.

Gerard: On that point, if you go to the website repair.com.au, you can enter your email address and it will automatically send you a copy of our white paper that goes into a little bit more detail as well and maybe answer some of these other questions.

Rosemary: Part of the problem with the wound is not only that you've got a defect in that tissue matrix, it's also the fact that you've lost all the instructions in that defect for how the body has to put itself back together again. Usually, in wound repair, the molecules of the wound repair like fibrin and then collagen, all these other ones, have to go into that defect and get replaced again and again and again trying to get a better structure. This can take weeks, months, some wounds even up to a year. By projecting the conditions of the intact matrix, they go in and line up the right way the first time. That was what the intention was.

Lionel: Very good. A new question, how deep of the wound does this work on? Could it work on a compound break wound, is the question?

Rosemary: Our wound dressing is for skin and it goes through the whole thickness of the skin. If there is split muscle underneath that defect it won't hold that muscle together. We have been working on another version of this tape for other connective tissues. Those include things like ligaments and tendon and bone, but we haven't developed our product there.

Gerard: That's down the tray.

Rosemary: That's down the tray.

Gerard: If the bone's sticking out, I'd stick that back in before I heal the skin.

Lionel: Bear in mind, you're not the GP here, Gerard?

Gerard: No, I know.

Rosemary: Yes, he's not a doctor. [laughter]

Lionel: Don't take his advice for good.

Rosemary: I'll probably give it a good scrub too.

Lionel: Here's a question that I have a particular interest in personally. Do you think that the bandage would reach a point where it could be involved in the beauty industry?

Rosemary: Yes. I accidentally realized it works really well on wrinkles. We are developing a product as a mask.

Nela: This is down track again. I think potential is there but, as I said, we can't claim before we provide scientific evidence that things are working statistically.

Lionel: But Nela, the great thing about cosmetics is you don't need any science. [laughter]

Nela: No, that figures. It's all about perception. Anyway, it's all good. We want to prove by increasing skin elasticity. There are some parameters you could use, of course, except perception. We will do studies on that. We believe Rosie did some preliminary work so she could talk about that. Definitely, that's a great question and we are happy to go and work further on that.

Gerard: Our patents do cover the cosmetic side of things as well. We've looked up that market and it will be exploited at some point.

Rosemary: We think that at the moment the main aim is to have a wound dressing replacing the need for people to experience stitching in emergency departments.

Gerard: That's the critical main reason.

Rosemary: That's the critical need that we'd like to address.

Lionel: You're inspiring someone or someones with lots of ideas of what other potential applications, which clearly you were headed in a little go tell that eyes. You are asked, will it be useful for cataracts et cetera?

Rosemary: I'm not sure what it would do with cataracts.

Gerard: You mean if the cataracts been cut out or?

Rosemary: Yes, I haven't explored that but I do know the other products which use similar aspects of the technology are used around the eyeball and round the orbit without any adverse effects or limitations. I'm not sure if they're intending to do anything more than cosmetic at this point in time.

Gerard: Nela, that's another one to add to the list of things that we need to--

Rosemary: That's more research that we can do.

Nela: Yes we will, as I said, think about that. That's really interesting question.

Lionel: You were asked a little while ago about how deep of a wound? I noticed that you pointed it out to us in fact, that you had the little tape measure on the side. Is there any limitation in the length of the wound that you can work on?

Rosemary: We're producing a half-meter length of the strip. I think if anyone was to turn up in the emergency department with a linear wound that's more than half a meter long, you'd simply address it by using two trips, but I'd be really surprised. There aren't many parts of the body that you can put a half-meter wound on.

Gerard: No. Mind you, when I was a child, this is a long time ago now, one of my uncles, unfortunately, had lung cancer. Back then, I'd say the wound that was as a result of his surgery looked like it was more than half a meter long. As I said, surgery's come a long way since the late '60s so I wouldn't expect there to be that length of the wound. Any length of the wound, the key is to hold the edges together and then apply our dressing.

Lionel: Perfect. Would you say there are any applications where it's not appropriate to use the dressing?

Rosemary: At this point, we wouldn't use it in any wound that's obviously infected not because it has a bad outcome but just because that needs to be addressed first before you can start sealing the wound. We wouldn't use it when deep tissues need to be deliberately repaired first. It's a deep injury where there's a tendon rupture or a ligament has been damaged or underlying bone repairs need to occur. We wouldn't use our dressing at this point in time until that has been addressed. Although, after that underlying injury has been addressed, you could use our wound dressing to seal the skin.

Lionel: Fair enough. Environmentally are there, I don't know, temperature, humidity, other things that would be a concern?

Gerard: Because it's silicon-based, silicon is actually used for baking trays et cetera in ovens. I believe it doesn't actually have a melting point, but it can take temperatures up to 800 degrees. Given normal atmospheric temperatures even up to 50 degrees, 50 or 55, whatever the world record is these days. We've also tested by putting it in a freezer, so it can go to very low temperatures and still be functional. In the not too distant future, we'll be able to prove it works in microgravity as well.

Lionel: Actually, I probably need to stop you there, we're reaching the time we're going to complete. I do have a couple of slides that our sponsors require that I share around the wrap-up. Thank you, everyone, who's attended this session. Thank you very much to the Rapid Repair team for providing such insight into what you're doing and where it's going and how exciting it all is. With that, I'll just run through a couple of the wrap-up slides now so that everyone's aware of what we got.

Gerard: Thanks Lionel, that was great.

Rosie: Thank you, Lionel.

Gerard: Thanks, Nela. Thanks, Rosie.

Nela: Thank you, guys.

Lionel: Must have a better one. As you will have seen, you can get all the information from your events booklets. Everything should be available to you shortly. Thank you very much for your attention. [01:00:24] [END OF AUDIO]