Precision medicine and biotechnology company, Macrogen (CEO Kap-Seok
Yang, www.macrogen.com)
announced that the company signed a subscription agreement of 4.1million
AUD with microbiome analysis company, Microba (CEO Blake Wills, www.microba.com).
Microba is specialized in the genetic analysis of the gut microbiome and
was established in 2017 by faculties of Queensland University. Microba
has accumulated research data and numerous related intellectual
properties since. Especially, its bioinformatics pipeline and the
database are known to be best in its field.
Macrogen has decided strategic investment because of Microba’s
competitiveness in BI (bioinformatics) analysis technology and target
therapeutics research activities and the high potential of the
microbiome market. In particular, Macrogen highly valued Microba’s
various corporate value-enhancing activities, such as planning licensing
deals with multinational pharmaceutical companies seeking to develop new
drugs using microbiome data.
Soon after the subscription agreement, two companies will sign the
licensing agreement to accelerate the market entry. Initially,
microbiome database will be constructed in Asia Pacific regions,
including Korea, Japan, and Singapore, and expect global service launch
in early 2020.
The microbiome service that both companies will co-develop targets the
whole genome (shotgun) of all microorganisms in the gut, instead of
targeting specific region (16S rRNA) of bacteria. Through this, it is
expected that both companies will contribute to the development of new
diagnostic methods and treatments as they can produce data, which will
enable novel microorganism discoveries and metabolite analysis.
“This investment will enable Microba to enhance the gut microbiome
analysis technology, as well as strengthening the global marketing and
business capabilities”, says Blake Wills, CEO of Microba, and he added,
“Based on the global network of both companies, we plan to launch
microbiome service in the US and Asia pacific regions.”
Kap-Seok Yang, CEO of Macrogen said, “As a strategic partner and a major
shareholder of Microba, Macrogen will actively participate to expand the
business of both companies”. Furthermore, he also added, “Through this
agreement, we expect to generate new revenues in the microbiome market
with competitive services utilizing the BI pipeline of Microba and
global network of Macrogen.”
In March 2019, two companies signed an MOU for microbiome-related
research cooperation and service development in Macrogen HQ in Seoul,
Korea.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190612005017/en/