Obesity-battling biotech firm enters into joint ventures

Obesity-battling biotech firm enters into joint ventures
York-based firm injects investment into R&D and brings in veteran commercial director

BIOTECH firm OptiBiotix  has made healthy progress in its partnerships to develop solutions to obesity, high cholesterol and diabetes.

The firm, which launched on the AIM in August 2014 has completed preclinical trials have on a cholesterol-lowering product and has filed four patents in the six months to 31 May 2015. 

Focusing on research and development, the firm, founded in 2012, has this year secured a joint venture agreement with Nizo for a weight-loss product and Jim Laird has been appointed as commercial director, joining from Premier Foods.

Prior to OptiBiotix being listed on AIM via a reverse takeover, Finance Yorkshire invested £520,000 to support OptiBiotix Health in the development of its programmes and human studies.  

Administrative expenses meant that the firm made a pretax loss of £514,462 which the firm said “reflects the costs of operating a public company”.

The group’s cash position is £2.47m which it says is sufficient to fund its existing research and development programmes.

Stephen O’Hara, chief executive of OptiBiotix commented: “I am delighted with the progress OptiBiotix has made since joining AIM in August 2014.

“In a short space of time we have moved one of our development programmes into clinical studies, progressed our sugar programme … to reduce chronic lifestyle disease such as heart disease, obesity and diabetes, built on our IP portfolio, and reached agreements with a number of commercial partners.

“During the period, we strengthened the board with the appointment of Jim Laird, who has brought industry specific commercial and corporate expertise to the company.”

 

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