Forget The Patent Numbers, All Eyes On Viaderma Inc (OTCMKTS:VDRM)'s Presentation

Viaderma Inc (OTCMKTS:VDRM) is an early runner in the micro cap space this week. The company is up close to 35% on its weekly open, and looks set to register further gains as action matures throughout the session on Tuesday.What is driving the gains?The most recent bit of news put out by Viaderma details the company's receiving of provisional patent numbers for a cannabis asset and an antibiotic asset. We are going to kick this discussion off with a bit of a bubble burst, but don't read into this as indicative of our long-term bias for the company – these aren’t patents, and there's not really any such thing as a provisional patent, as the PR seems to infer. Viderma filed what is called a provisional patent application, which is basically a way of proving first move (which is important in a first to file environment like that of the US), and the numbers simply relate to to the provisional applications.That's all they are.So, that's the bad news. The good news is that what they are or aren’t isn’t really that important right now.Those familiar with this company will likely already be familiar with its lead asset, a drug called Viabecline. For those new to the drug, it is a topical application antibiotic formulation that Viaderma is attempting to get approved in a diabetic foot ulcer indication. Of the 23 million people affected with diabetes in the US, 25% will develop diabetic ulcers. These are very tough to treat and generally result in open (and practically impossible to close in many cases) wounds. Open wounds get infected and lead to the necessity for amputation.Viabecline is designed to serve as an antibiotic in things like cuts and scrapes, but Viaderma noticed that it seems to improve the outcome of patients with diabetic foot ulcers, when applied topically in combination with the standard of care treatment.Here's a statement from company CEO Dr. Christopher Otiko:

"Viabecline is more than 96% effective in healing diabetic foot ulcers within 4 weeks. This effect is more pronounced in more severe wounds, and the effect is the same whether the wound is infected or not."

It's difficult to overstate the importance of this statement, if true and correct, for Viaderma going forward. If the drug works as described by the CEO here, then its acceptance as a new adjuvant to SOC in this space is basically a given. The implications of this for Viaderma are obvious.And here's the important thing for us; the thing we think markets should be focusing on near term instead of some patent application numbers – Otiko is about to get on stage at the Diabetic Foot Global Conference (DFCon 2017), at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, in front of hundreds of the leading minds in this space, and present the data that led him to make the above statement.Now, the data has been collected from outpatient studies, and multi site studies at that, spread across a seven-year period. It's then been collated, and the company has estimated the treatment effect from a basket of available information:

"Clinical investigation (CI) documenting the treatment effectiveness was estimated"

So it's not a cut and dry study, injecting some uncertainty as to the true meaning of the numbers. That said, if Otiko can back the numbers up, and the fact that he's presenting them as part of an abstract of a journal study in Texas suggests he can (we don't think he'd want to get on stage just to make himself look stupid) then Viabecline could be this company's ticket to ride.Bottom line here is this: forget the patent application numbers. We think that the company has only announced them as an excuse to lead into the second part of the same press release, the part that discusses Otiko's upcoming presentation, anyway.More importantly, don't underestimate the importance of the upcoming presentation.He'll take the stage on Friday.We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest updates on VDRM, sign up below!Disclosure: We have no position in VDRM and have not been compensated for this article.