So, one possibility is we just do a deal with a major cancer testing company. Another possibility is that when we met with the large insurance companies, they told us there’s a possibility that they will mandate this test. I don’t know that that will happen or not, but it’s a possibility, because if it saves them billions of dollars, why wouldn’t they? Now, yes, it’s nice that it will also save lives and it will also give people that have Barrett’s esophagus tremendous peace of mind if you know you’re at low risk because otherwise one in 50 or one in 100 people with Barrett’s esophagus will get esophageal cancer, which is close to a death sentence unfortunately. So, if you have Barrett’s esophagus but we say you’re at low risk, that’s incredible peace of mind.
But you know let’s face it insurance companies what they care about is the bottom dollar. It will save them a fortune if they mandate the GIs to use our test. And again, GIs, they are dying for our test, because right now, insurance companies don’t want to reimburse an ablation procedure and the GIs want to give this ablation procedure to everybody. So, it’s a really interesting dynamic where our tests could fit in perfectly. There’s no competition for our test in the world. There’s no test in the world that does what our test does.
Noella Alexander-Young: Thank you, Ted.
Ted Karkus: Just my humble opinion.
Noella Alexander-Young: Next question. “LUCD has an EsoCheck test which is a simple tool which allows precise targeted collection of lower esophageal cells for pre-cancer testing. How does this compare to BE-Smart?”
Ted Karkus: That’s a preliminary test. If you think of it, we’re probably more — I don’t think of us as competitors at all. If anything, that’s a test that you would do preliminarily before doing our test, all right? Their test — I don’t really want to talk about competitors. I’m being honest with you, they’re not competition. They can’t make any of the claims that we make. They’re not in the business of high risk, low risk esophageal cancer assessment. They don’t have our proprietary proteins that we discovered that we’re using. There’s no comparison, all right? Now, that’s not to say that there isn’t potentially a place for their test early on in the process when you’re first getting GERD, gastroesophageal reflex disease, but their test, honestly, just because we’re in the same industry doesn’t mean we’re competing against each other. Very little in common. Other than the fact that we’re in, “the same esophageal cancer testing industry.”
Noella Alexander-Young: Thank you for that response. We’re coming up on your last two questions. The first one is, what is the size of the MENA deal and are there growth opportunities?”
Ted Karkus: Sure. Tremendous growth opportunities. It’s a little complicated. First of all, the region is complicated because we now are developing a lot of relationships over in the MENA region. Secondly, it’s complicated because a lot of these companies are actually working in collaboration with each other. I didn’t put numbers into the press release, but I am optimistic that we have more deals coming. And with the other deals, there may be guarantees in them and the dollar amounts could be substantial. So, I’m wetting everyone’s appetite with this deal because I wanted it to be in this press release to understand that this is now that we’re actually ramping up. We talked about building the B2B business. We talked about the conferences previously, but now we’re actually starting to sign deals.
And not to say that we don’t have other B2B deals that we’re not already doing. We’re already doing B2B business. But understand, the size of some of the deals we’re working on now are enormous, they’re game changing. So, I’ll have more to talk about. I promise you — I shouldn’t use the word promise, I anticipate that there are more deals coming and more updates coming with Nebula, not only in the long term, but in the short term. I can’t tell you whether that’s weeks or months, although it wouldn’t surprise me if it is week. We have a lot more coming with Nebula. I’m really excited to share more with you. We’re just getting started here.
Noella Alexander-Young: Thank you so much, Ted. And your last question is, “How do you plan to compete with the major labs and DNA companies, such as Quest and 23andMe, that are offering low-cost WGS and WES services now?”
Ted Karkus: Great question. So first of all, Quest and LabCorp, completely different business than 23andMe, all right? Second of all, again, the ancestry — and I don’t want to talk about 23andMe in particular. I don’t I don’t want to talk about data breaches. I’m just going to tell you ancestry companies in general are studying less than 1% of your DNA. They are ancestry testing companies, all right? So, now they’re talking about getting into health, but with a test that pales — I mean, there’s just no comparison to studying virtually 100% of your DNA. The health insights we get are so much more accurate, in depth, there’s just no comparison. If you want health-related information, if you know anything, you don’t have to know anything, we’re going to teach you, that’s one of our jobs, is we’re going to teach the public just how great our test is compared to an ancestry test if you want health-related information.
The ancestry companies are trying to get into it. They’re not going to get into it in a serious way in the long term if they don’t have a whole genome sequencing, which could be a lot more expensive. But if they don’t have a lab doing the whole genome sequencing, we’re the low-cost provider. So, how are they going to compete with us? Even if they get into actual whole genome sequencing, they’re going to have to send it to our lab or another lab like ours. Now, look at a Quest or LabCorp, they’re huge companies, but whole genome sequencing is a new business. It was so expensive historically, it wasn’t a business for a big lab to do because it was too expensive. What they had to offer the cost — what they were charging for whole genome sequence, like $1,000.
