June 2011
Mark Marek of Chartpoppers.com: Hello, welcome to Chartpoppers. Today we’re joined by CEO Kim Thompson of Kraig Biocraft Laboratories. Kraig Biocraft Laboratories trades, and is quoted on the Over the Counter QB, under the symbol KBLB.
Kim, thanks for coming back to the show and updating us on the company.
Kim Thompson, CEO and founder, Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc.: It’s my pleasure Mark.
MM: Kim, we do appreciate you taking the time out.
I know that you’re a very busy man. You get a lot of calls since you cracked the code, but could you maybe spend a little time and tell us about how things have progressed since you made that announcement about six months ago and what developments have been in the Company?
KT: Absolutely, for your listeners who may not be familiar with the Company let me give a little bit of recap. In fact, when we last did an interview, Mark, it was shortly before we made that announcement with the University of Notre Dame and, essentially, what Kraig Biocraft Laboratories has been doing for the last several years, is working cooperatively with the University of Notre Dame to produce recombinant silk fibers.
Essentially, what we’re doing is genetic engineering work, to try to create a platform for industrial scale production of recombinant silk fibers with similar mechanical characteristics to those found in nature, in spider silk. A material which is stronger, tougher than steel, highly flexible, which has physical and mechanical properties which are, in some ways, unmatched by materials which man can currently produce, and we really, I’m happy to say, back in September we were able to announce that we had largely achieved those goals.
In working cooperatively with the University, we were able to announce that we created approximately twenty different strains of transgenic silkworm, which we created using spider silk DNA sequences and that these silkworms were spinning recombinant silk, which was a fusion of spider silk and native silkworm silk and we announced, also at that joint press conference, that one of these silks, in particular, which we are tentatively calling “Monster Silk” was demonstrating physical properties of strength and elasticity, which significantly exceed that of natural silkworm silk. So, this was a major milestone for the Company, but a lot has happened since then.
What I can now reveal here in this interview, because we actually issued a press release about it, is that shortly after that announcement we entered into negotiations with one of the world’s largest and most powerful biotechnology companies, Sigma-Aldrich, and we entered into negotiations with them in order to acquire licensing rights to use their very powerful Zinc Finger technology in our laboratories.
It’s taken months to finalize that agreement, but we actually signed with them on April 8 and we are now introducing the Zinc Finger technology into our laboratory.
Sigma is currently designing and building customized Zinc Fingers for our use and this is and incredibly powerful technology, which will greatly accelerate our research and development efforts and also give us capabilities, which simply would have been impossible with any other technology.
It’s also, from our perspective, something of a stamp of approval. Sigma came in and did due diligence on our Company, sent scientists into our lab to make sure our technology was solid before signing the deal with us and that was really the first time we let an outside company come in and actually put a scientist in our lab and review what we’ve done and what we’ve accomplished.
That was a very big deal for us. Sigma’s now a minor shareholder of Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, as a result of this transaction, and we do anticipate that it will rapidly speed up our development of the next generation of products.
MM: Kim, could give us a little more understanding in what the technology that Life Science brings to the table enables you to do?
KT: To describe this technology that we’ve acquired through this licensing agreement with Sigma, it’s going to be little difficult for those who aren’t intimately familiar with the workings of biotechnology, but, in essence, and, this going to be a little more detailed than you want, but, in essence, this technology, this Zinc-Finger technology with Sigma, will allow us for the first time to make changes in the silkworm DNA that were completely impossible to make before. In the past, these genetic engineering technologies were almost like throwing darts at a gigantic dart board from a distance of, maybe, 200 yards and, in order the make the changes that you wanted, you would have to throw those darts really hard. You might have to throw 10,000 of them to get even close to your target and you probably would never get exactly get to your target, but you could get close. With 10,000 tries you might get lucky and get close.
With this Zinc-Finger technology, it’s actually possible to walk right up to the dart board and push the dart in exactly where you want it the first try; the very first try.
To say that, and this is just my own thinking, but my own thinking here is that this will accelerate our product development by a factor of 50.
Instead of 10,000 tries to create a new recombinant silk fiber with extraordinary properties, we should be able to design the sequence, walk up to that dartboard and make that edit, make that change.
It’s almost like editing a document in Microsoft Word. Go into the document, you see a word that’s misspelled, you can change it. You want to change a period to a question mark, you can change it.
For the first time, this technology will give us the ability to do that with silkworm DNA. So, it’s incredibly powerful. We’re very excited. The deal’s almost been six months in the works, but it’s six months that I think are really going to pay off for Kraig Labs and its shareholders.
MM: Back in December 2010 you released a video, which deals with the basic technology of spider silk. I think it’s important to mention that, because it could be a little hard to wrap your hands around the significance of these findings. Could you maybe give us a link or direction to that video?
KT: Probably the best, there have been several videos that we produced or that have been produced by, for example, the University of Notre Dame, on this technology. I would suggest going to the Company’s website and going to our news page or our video page. There you can find links to several news stories and videos describing what we’re doing. All of those videos predate the signing of Sigma deal, but you can certainly get an idea of the nature of the technology and what it is that we’ve accomplished, and what we’re doing.
The website is www.KraigLabs.com . Those videos are available there and what you can see on those videos is actual silk fibers that we’ve produced, the recombinant silk fibers, using spider silk DNA.
You can see the genetic engineering technologies. You can see our genetically modified silkworms and, of course, you can see me and some of the scientists that have been working at Notre Dame on this project for the last several years.
I know, to many people who just learned Kraig Labs since September, it appears like we arrived on the scene overnight and we formed a company and created this transgenic silkworm, but it’s actually been many, many years in the works.
There’s been a lot of elbow work. A lot of hard work and effort by Kraig Labs and the University of Notre Dame to bring us to where we are now, which is a point where we actually have not just research and development, but actual product and are gearing up towards actual commercialization.
MM: Again, the Company is Kraig Biocraft Laboratories. The symbol can be found on the Over the Counter QB, under the symbol KBLB.
Kim, we’re very excited to be following the Company during this crucial time. It’s been a pleasure and thanks for speaking with us and we look forward to checking in a few months and just see where you are with the spider silk.
KT: Mark, it’s been a pleasure, and we haven’t forgotten that you came to interview us, even before we had the breakthrough announcement in September.
You know, since that time, we’ve obviously garnered a lot of interest and we received a lot of calls, but before that breakthrough announcement, we were relatively obscure and we haven’t forgotten that you initiated some coverage of us before we were known and it’s been a please to do another interview with you.
MM: Thank you very much, Kim. Have a good day.