According to the 2017 Global Life Sciences Outlook from Deloitte, global health care expenditures are projected to reach $8.7 trillion by 2020, up from $7 trillion in 2015. In addition to the organic growth inexorably driven by the world’s largest population of 1.4 billion people, the Chinese government is actively involved in boosting innovation and injecting fresh investment in the sector, according to Ernst and Young’s Life Sciences Report: Asia, published in March 2017. China’s current Five Year Plan (2016 to 2020), the 13th such social and economic government initiative, has “provided further momentum to innovation and reforms in the country, with biomedicine being identified as a key priority.”
“Innovation is the primary driving force for development and must occupy a central place in China’s development strategy,” stated Li Keqiang, Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, in his opening speech at the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, in March 2016, as reported by Reuters. “We should strive to achieve major breakthroughs in basic research, applied research, and research in strategic and frontier fields by 2020.”
Pressure BioSciences, Inc. (PBIO), a leader in the development and sale of innovative, broadly enabling, pressure-based instruments and related consumables for the worldwide life sciences industry, recently announced the launch of its first Center of Excellence (CoE) in China that will serve as a springboard for the company’s sales and marketing push into one of the largest and fastest growing life sciences markets in the world. As the site for its first CoE in China, Pressure BioSciences selected the laboratory of Professor Tiannan Guo, MD, PhD, at Westlake Institute for Advanced Study (WIAS) in Hangzhou.
“The potential impact of having our Barocycler instruments in a laboratory at one of China’s premier research institutes, led by one of the most innovative and knowledgeable PCT users in the world, is most exciting to us,” said Pressure BioSciences’ President and CEO Richard Schumacher. “The Chinese life sciences market is one of the largest and fastest-growing in the world. We expect to rapidly expand into this critical market with help from our colleagues at WIAS. Together with our recent expansion into Europe and the hiring of our own field sales team in the U.S., we believe our marketing strategy will result in significant revenue increases, driven by a larger and more diversified global customer base.”
Professor Guo is one of the co-developers of PCT-SWATH, a novel analytical method combining the unique capabilities of Pressure BioScience’s patented Pressure Cycling Technology platform for sample preparation with the cutting-edge analytical capabilities of SCIEX’s Sequential Windowed Acquisition of All Theoretical Fragment Ion Mass Spectra (SWATH-MS) method of mass spectrometry data acquisition. Professor Guo developed PCT-SWATH in conjunction with Professor Ruedi Aebersold of ETH-Zurich in Switzerland, who was awarded the Karger Medal from the Barnett Institute of Chemical & Biological Analysis at Northeastern University earlier this year, recognizing biennially an individual who has significantly contributed to the development of new bioanalytical methods.
Pressure BioSciences and SCIEX, a global leader in life sciences analytical technologies, have an exclusive co-marketing agreement to improve protein quantitation in complex samples. Data strongly indicate that PCT-SWATH enables scientists to reproducibly extract, identify, and quantify more proteins from complex samples types in a shorter period of time than current methods. The company believes PCT-SWATH to be a singular breakthrough achievement in high throughput proteomic sample analysis that will potentially facilitate the path to earlier and superior biological insights and discoveries.
“Having worked with this novel, enabling technology platform for many years, I believe strongly that PCT will have a significant impact in helping research scientists in China and around the world make new discoveries in multiple fields, including proteomics, genomics, lipidomics, and metabolomics,” Professor Guo said. “I am excited about the tasks ahead — to help educate research scientists and broaden the use of the PCT platform in China, as well as in other countries in Asia and worldwide.”
The launch of the China CoE marks the latest step in the company’s expansion of its sales and marketing assets. In the first quarter of 2017, Pressure BioSciences achieved CE Marking (European Conformity) designation for its Barocycler 2320EXT, its next-generation PCT-based sample preparation instrument. The CE Marking designation means that the product complies with the essential requirements of the relevant European health, safety and environmental protection legislation, enabling the company to market and sell the Barocycler 2320EXT in all 31 countries comprising the European Economic Area.
Source: Pressure BioSciences
Additionally, the company has established a five-person field sales force to cover the US regionally. The efforts of this national sales force will be augmented by EKG Associates, a life sciences lead generation company, with whom Pressure BioSciences contracted earlier this year to augment marketing and sales across the US and Canada.
Pressure BioSciences has long believed China to be the single largest market for its products outside the US and has had a distribution agreement since 2014 with Powertech Technology, a leading distributor of analytical instruments and other equipment to China’s biotechnology, pharmaceutical, agricultural, environmental, food safety, and commercial testing laboratory markets. Powertech supports its customers with a network of 18 distribution offices, a maintenance center, an applications laboratory and multiple sub-dealers. Dr. Nate Lawrence, Pressure BioScience’s VP of Marketing and Sales, said, “With the support of Professor Guo and his team, we believe that Powertech will flourish and soon become an even stronger distributor of [our] products throughout all of China.”
Most recently, in October 2017, the company was issued two utility model patents in China for its Ultra Shear Technology (UST), a novel technique based on the use of intense shear forces generated from ultra-high pressure (greater than 20,000 psi). The patents have also been filed in many other countries worldwide, and Pressure BioSciences believes that UST has the potential to play a significant role in a number of commercially important areas, including the formulation of high quality stable nanoemulsions and the preparation of extended shelf-life “clean label” food. Schumacher has stated before that UST represents entirely new market opportunities for Pressure BioSciences, and holds the potential to “change the face of the company.”
For now, the company is aggressively executing on its global sales and marketing strategy for its Barocycler product line. With approximately 80,000 research laboratories in need of better extraction methods for their critical work on treating cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other studies, Pressure BioSciences has ample runway for growth.
“Based on market data, our results to date, and the fact that PCT is a novel, cutting-edge technology currently uncontested in the field of small volume high pressure preparation of research samples, we believe that a large number of these laboratories could benefit from the advantages of the PCT system,” Schumacher said earlier this year when Pressure BioSciences won a 2017 North American Excellence Awards for the Barocycler 2320EXT. “We believe that we can capture a reasonable share of this existing market over the next 3-5 years, and that by doing so, we could become a highly respected and profitable life sciences instrument and consumables provider.”
In the interest of full disclosure, we call the reader’s attention to the fact that Equities.com, Inc. is compensated by the companies profiled in the Spotlight Companies section. The purpose of these profiles is to provide awareness of these companies to investors in the micro, small-cap and growth equity community and should not in any way be considered as a recommendation to buy, sell or hold these securities. Equities.com is not a registered broker dealer, investment advisor, financial analyst, investment banker or other investment professional. We are a publisher of original and third party news and information. All profiles are based on information that is available to the public. The information contained herein should not be considered to be complete and is not guaranteed by Equities.com to be free from misstatement or errors. The views expressed are our own and not intended to be the basis for any investment decision. Readers are reminded to do their own due diligence when researching any companies mentioned on this website. Always bear in mind that investing in early-stage companies is risky and you are encouraged to only invest an amount that you can afford to lose completely without any change in your lifestyle. Equities has been compensated with cash, common shares and/or warrants for market awareness services provided.
