Full Press Release Details
Corporation (OTCBB: CTSO)
Shareholder Update Conference Call Transcript
21, 2013 @ 4:15 pm Eastern
Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you
for standing by. Welcome to the CytoSorbents 2013 Shareholder Update Conference Call. During today's presentation, all parties
will be in a listen-only mode. This conference is being recorded today, August 21, 2013.
I would now like to turn the conference
over to our host, Mr. Alan Sheinwald of Alliance Advisors. Please go ahead, sir.
Alan Sheinwald - Alliance Advisors
Thank you operator and good afternoon.
Welcome to CytoSorbents 2013 Shareholder Update Conference Call. With us today are Dr. Phillip Chan, Chief Executive Officer and
President, Kathleen Bloch, Chief Financial Officer, Vincent Capponi, Chief Operating Officer, Christian Steiner, VP of Sales and
Marketing from Germany, and Chris Cramer, VP of Business Development
Before I turn the call over to Dr. Chan,
I'd like to remind listeners that during the call, management's prepared remarks may contain forward-looking statements which
are subject to risks and uncertainties. Management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions
today. Therefore, the Company claims protection under Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from results discussed today and therefore, we refer you to a more detailed
discussion of these risks and uncertainties in the Company's filings with the SEC. Any projections as to the Company's future performance
represented by management include estimates today as of August 21, 2013 and the Company assumes no obligation to update these projections
in the future as market conditions change.
Well during today's conference call
we have done our best to take everyone's submitted questions and answer within our prepared remarks as best we can. We received
many, many questions and thank everyone for participating. If we do not answer your question we would ask you to either contact
myself and my team at Alliance Advisors or the Company directly after the call today.
At this time, I would like to turn the
call over to Dr. Phillip Chan. Phil, the floor is yours, please go ahead.
Thanks very much Alan and thanks to everyone
who's joined our call today.
During today's call we'll provide
an overview of CytoSorbents for those of you who may be new to the story and update everyone on where we stand today. Along the
way we plan to address many of the questions that have been submitted by investors. So thank you very much to those who submitted
CytoSorbents is a critical care focused
medical device company using blood purification to treat life-threatening illnesses. In a relatively short period of time, CytoSorbents
has grown to 27 full time employees and part-time consultants, both here in New Jersey and at our subsidiary in Berlin, Germany.
And we are very fortunate to have an excellent management team to lead this rapid growth. After quickly introducing myself, I'd
like to ask each member of the management team to give a quick summary of his or her background.
As for myself, I have been the CEO of CytoSorbents
Corporation for nearly 5 years. By background, I am a Board-certified internal medicine physician with a strong background in clinical
medicine and research, having received my MD and PhD from Yale University School of Medicine and completed my residency at the
Harvard Medical School at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. I am also an alum of Cornell University, where I received a
BS in cell and molecular biology. Prior to joining CytoSorbents, I led healthcare and life science investments as a Partner for
the $80 million NJTC Venture Fund, which is a loyal shareholder of the company. During my 5-year tenure at NJTC Venture Fund, I
was responsible for numerous investments covering the gamut of therapeutic, medical device and diagnostics companies. I also co-founded
Andrew Technologies, a venture-backed medical device company currently commercializing its FDA approved HydraSolve lipoplasty
Vincent Capponi - COO:
Hello everyone. My name is Vince Capponi,
Chief Operating Officer of CytoSorbents. I have been with the company for more than a dozen years and have more than 20 years of
management experience in medical device, pharmaceutical and imaging equipment companies including Baxter, Upjohn, Sims Deltec and
Sabratek I led the regulatory approval of the first heparin flush syringe now used ubiquitously in hospitals around the world to
keep IV's patent, as well as the manufacturing of more than a million units a week for this device. At CytoSorbents, I led
the CE Mark approval of CytoSorb , the recent signing of Hitit Medical as one of our first distributors, and am heavily involved
in all aspects of the company, including manufacturing of CytoSorb and new product development. Kathy?
Kathleen Bloch - CFO:
Good afternoon everyone. This is Kathleen
Bloch and I am the Chief Financial Officer of CytoSorbents. I bring more than 20 years of executive financial experience at both
public and private companies to help drive the success of CytoSorbents. Before joining the company, I was the CFO of Laureate Biopharmaceuticals,
a leading contract manufacturer of biologic drugs and my background includes significant experience in rapidly-growing medical
device and manufacturing companies. I am a Certified Public Accountant with an MBA in finance. Chris?
Chris Cramer - VP Business
Thank you Kathy. Hi, I am Chris Cramer,
Vice President of Business Development for CytoSorbents. I have over 15+ years of business development and commercial experience,
most recently at Johnson & Johnson, where over the course of six years, I held various leadership roles in the medical device
division, most recently as Senior Director of New Venture Development. I also spent more than eight years in management consulting
at PWC Consulting, working with leading health care companies across the world. Christian?
Christian Steiner - VP Sales
Hello, I am Dr. Christian Steiner, Vice
President of Sales and Marketing of CytoSorbents and Co-Managing Director of CytoSorbents Europe GmbH. I manage all direct sales
and marketing efforts of CytoSorb in the German speaking countries of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and am working with
my colleagues in the US to expand distribution of CytoSorb in Europe. I am a German medical physician by background and have
spent more than 13 years in the sales and marketing of critical care therapies, particularly extracorporeal therapies such as the
MARS liver dialysis system which was eventually acquired by Gambro, and non-invasive hemodynamic monitoring systems by Pulsion
Medical. During this time, I have established a significant network of key opinion leader contacts throughout Germany, but also
elsewhere in Europe and the US. So it is a pleasure to be on the call with you today.
Alan Sheinwald - Moderator:
Great. Dr. Chan - to start out, could
you please give listener's a quick overview on CytoSorbents?
Absolutely. CytoSorbents is an emerging
growth opportunity aiming to revolutionize critical care medicine with a powerful blood purification technology called CytoSorb ,
now approved in the European Union. The goal of CytoSorb is to prevent or treat organ failure, the cause of nearly
half of all deaths in the ICU for which no therapies exist.
The underlying blood purification technology
is based on highly biocompatible, porous polymer beads that act like tiny sponges to remove harmful substances from blood. When
these beads are placed into a cartridge roughly the size of a drinking glass, blood can be pumped outside of the body with a standard
hemodialysis machine, through this cartridge where toxic materials are removed, and that purified blood is simply recirculated
back into the body. These beads are some of the highest purity sorbent materials commercially available for medical use, and are
protected by 32 issued US patents with multiple applications pending.
I mentioned before that we focus on critical
care medicine. Millions of people are admitted to the intensive care unit in hospitals all over the world each year for life-threatening
conditions such as sepsis, trauma, burn injury, lung injury and many other conditions where inflammation plays a serious detrimental
role. You may have known people who have landed in the ICU after a serious car crash, or after a bout of severe pneumonia, or after
a major burn injury from a fire. These patients are extremely sick, and frequently develop organ failure where vital organs stop
working. Organ failure puts these patients at extremely high risk of death.
The problem with critical care medicine
today is that although we can help patients stay alive when their organs fail with supportive care therapies like mechanical ventilation
or dialysis - often called "life support" - there is in fact very little that can be done to prevent or treat
organ failure and actually help these patient get better except for the passage of time. In fact, keeping a patient alive until
his or her own body heals itself is a major strategy on how many critically ill patients are treated today.
But because of the general inability to
improve clinical outcome, patients often linger for days to weeks at a time at a cost of $2000-3000 a day in the United States,