Botanical drug market on the rise, company holds uniqueness in new drug discovery

Microbio, a listed company at emerging stock market, is one of the few company focused on botanical new drug R&D look up to expand healthy food product market, is also one of the few officially into profit stage as a new drug discovery company.

Currently, new drugs are widely based on chemical drug with estimated huge market of 50 billion USD. Many of the big pharmas are facing bottle neck of chemical drug discovery as increase of R&D spending with decrease number of new drug push out of pipeline for market,

Successfully instituted a drug evaluation method is as fascinating as walk on the moon is the pros regarded for 20th century; but the cons remain to be to too strict which makes almost inadequate to find a lead compound under chemical composition. In particular, a long period on new drug evaluation; for a new drug, average of 10 to 15 years are needed with R&D spanding 500-800 million USD, thus big pharma players' dilemma becomes prominent

Inversely, an increase of global use in botanical drug market size is going uphill. As FDA has officially announced new regulation on herbal/botanical drug regulation and registration, many of traditional herbal ingredient can bypass phase I safety study and straight to phase II and/or III study, which is beneficial to botanical drug development time, plus botanical drug research cost is less expansive, low in toxicity, all these has come to big pharmas' attention.

Till now, there are as many as 200 botanical new drug readily for IND application, and one botanical drug has undergon NDA approval, once the first case of botanical approved by FDA, it will be a big breakthrough. By then, we might be expecting international big pharma to pay much more attention to botanical drug market, by means of merge and acquisition is irresistible.

Withholding uniqueness in microorganism fermentation technology, many new drug discoveries are undertaking

Microbio started in year 2000, based on biotransformation as company's core technology. Microbio had long investing relevant technology, three years prior to company's establishment, for this reason, Microbio was able to installed high standard plant at LungTan second year to company's establishment; not only set a new record in GMP certification in Taiwan, but also in the same month, the new drug MicroSoy-20 is able to approved for conducting phase III

The new drug discovery technology rely on biotransformation in which specific microorganism convert TCM raw material into new active ingredient. Through different microorganism combined with different raw materials, much more new active compound with varieties are composed with stronger activity, and this method can help to sooth the hardship of almost run out of chemical lead compounds; This conversion platform has unlimited potential, once work along with a rapid screening system for substance identification can shorten the speed for new drug development, and lower R&D cost as well.

Currently there are a lot of new drugs under stage of R&D with focused indication on cancer Cachexia, carvidovascular disease prevention, colorectal cancer, and improvement in iron deficiency anemia. Among these, include the MS-20 and MS-COMPLEX these two drugs are arranged for IND submission for FDA , although new drug developing is quite time consuming, once one of these are approved for new drug, it will be beneficial to Microbio. In particular, MS-20 is found to be effective as to improve cancer related Cachexia, and this market is estimated with 4 billion USD per year, once MS-20 has passed clinical study and proven to be effective, the patent right should worth more than hundred million NTD.

Business operation going uphill with profit taking, rigorously expanding market in China

Besides of new drug development, Lee Herbs product series are showing promising result and well know in health product market, and the yield from Lee Herbs indeed contribute a lot into Microbio's new drug development for explosive growth in the future. Through Lee Herbs distribution and success, it not only bring in sufficient cash flow, but also helps to maintain the stability of Microbio's business operation.

Due to fact that it takes a lot to get on cosmed distribution, for this Microbio aim to the TCM drug store for deploying Lee Herbs chain spots; in a matter of less than one year, Microbio has established over 1000 chain spots, a rather swift market development.

As her healthy product series sales started to climb up, Microbio' last year's revenue goes from 56 million NTD to 200 million, and business operation has turned to profit taking. Comparing with other new drug developing company which has to suffer form limited cash flow during their developing stage, Microbio has gain benefit in positive cash flow from sales strategy aim to healthy food and channel distribution, this successful business model benefit Microbio in investment evaluation when comparing with similar new drug developing companies.

Microbio plan to weave her sales network by signed up with more than 1500 TCM stores, and apart from this, there will be 200 "Fromme" vigor health spots to be established, as well as a booming in ODM/OEM for local as well as oversea companies.

Moreover, Microbio is even focused on vast China market in the next stage. In order to do that, Microbio Shanghai plant is already installed with land occupation of four times bigger than Taiwan's factory. Besides, Microbio will take the advantage of Taiwan's experience in channel distribution to open up 3000 "Health Column" health food chains, along with production to deploy China's market; on top of that, Microbio's botanical R&D capability also strengthen Microbio in international collaboration in pharmaceutical production. With so much useful resources, this company is stable with developing potential worth of investor to pay attention to.