- Record product sales growth reported for fourth quarter and full year 2017
- Company has over 300 of its ultra-high pressure instruments in research labs worldwide
- 2017 revenue exceeded $2.2 million with just one field sales rep; company’s field sales force expanded to five with recent hires
- December 2017 acquisition of high pressure IP allows company to enter the biologics contract research services sector
- Newly-issued patents in Ultra Shear Technology (UST) address broad markets for stable, water-soluble nanoemulsions, including cannabinoids
As scientific researchers who work with cellular material seek to uncover new potential for creating vaccines and drugs, counteracting harmful chemicals and making the therapeutic properties of nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals more effective, Pressure BioSciences Inc. (OTCQB: PBIO) is watching its development of pressure-based laboratory tools and related consumable products gain a growing worldwide following. Pressure BioSciences’ products are based on the notion that using high pressures to break open cells in order to tap their potential for medicinal and therapeutic uses is a more productive, beneficial way of extracting the biomolecules inside, as compared to traditional methods of ‘beating up’ cells that are commonly employed in research. The company expects recent product development, company acquisitions and personnel decisions to drive it toward a banner year in 2018.
“We have about 300 instruments already placed in research labs all over the world. These instruments generate pressures from levels of several hundred pounds per square inch (“psi”) all the way up to, believe it or not, 90,000 psi,” CEO Ric Schumacher said in a March interview with Uptick Newswire (
http://ibn.fm/2HdWm). “They basically are pressure chambers that sit on a laboratory bench, which then offer scientists who are working to find new cures and preventive strategies a very safe way to generate pressures that can be used to kill viruses and bacteria for safer handling, to better control reactions in scientific experiments and to more efficiently break open cells to get to the biomolecules, such as DNA and proteins, that will enable new discoveries.”
Pressure BioSciences’ patented pressure cycling technology (“PCT”) platform uses alternating cycles of hydrostatic pressure ranging between normal levels and the super-high extremes of which its equipment is capable to safely control bio-molecular interactions in the laboratory setting in a manner that complies with the good manufacturing practices (“GMP”) expected of biotherapeutics drug makers by regulatory agencies such as the FDA. That includes the ability to generate downloadable data reports on its processes designed to help ensure consistent outcomes and regulatory compliance. The company’s equipment also generates constant, or static, pressure as part of its applications in such areas as biomarker discovery and scientific forensics, but the company’s PCT platform is the revolutionary (and patented) aspect of its business enterprise.
As Pressure BioSciences has developed new software for its recently released, next generation PCT instrument and acquired new customers throughout the world in recent months, it has also increased its sales force. Schumacher said that reaching a multi-million dollar revenue level just wasn’t possible with the single sales representative that the company has employed for the past 10 years, so it hired four additional field sales reps to cover the entire United States. Even with the new sales reps just hired and trained, the fourth quarter and full year 2017 marked record sales periods, with instrument sales soaring by 55 percent in Q4 and consumable sales up 30 percent for the 12-month period.
“Our instruments are selling well, but what’s also important is that the consumables are also showing good growth— it’s one thing to sell the razor, but you also have to sell the razor blade,” Schumacher said by way of example. “This was by far the largest increase we’ve ever had year over year for the combination of instruments and consumables.”
The company is also excited about its acquisition of Colorado-based high pressure biotechnology company BaroFold, Inc., which gave Pressure BioSciences eight new patents and extends the reach of some of its other patents for another decade. Schumacher said that BaroFold “ran into some problems” with its operation, but he believes that Pressure BioSciences can revive its productivity and take it to the next level.
“All of their intellectual property relates to high pressure and its effect on biomolecules; furthermore, their high pressure applications work on our equipment. We don’t have to build anything new, we don’t have to modify anything,” he said. “Their technology is basically a way of making protein (drugs) better. This acquisition has opened up a whole new business unit for Pressure BioSciences.”
With the BaroFold acquisition and the new developments in Ultra Shear Technology (including two issued patents), Pressure BioSciences now has three distinct working groups — its research products and services unit, its biologics contract research services unit and its Ultra Shear Technology (UST) development unit.
The UST platform incorporates a novel technique based on the use of intense shear forces generated from ultra-high pressure valve discharge, which the company believes can drive a number of commercially important areas including the preparation of extended shelf-life ‘clean label’ food and the formulation of high-quality, stable nanoemulsions that are mixtures of two or more liquids that normally would not mix with each other without the addition of chemicals called emulsifiers. Nanoemulsions are expected to provide an advanced way of making drugs more bioavailable to the body, and they were recently touted as a way to potentially improve the effectiveness of cannabinoids such as CBD in medical marijuana applications (
http://ibn.fm/NHw1E).
“With these new initiatives firmly in place, a priceless global customer base, a newly released next-generation instrument with GMP-compliant software, additional key opinion leader customers, greatly enhanced sales and marketing capabilities, and our new BaroFold and Ultra Shear Technology (UST) programs, we look forward with excitement to 2018, which we believe should be a solid year of growth and expansion,” Schumacher said in a news release issued on March 13.
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