Market progress helps Blis finances

By Phil Boeyen, ShareChat Business News Editor

Monday 26th November 2001

Dunedin biotech company, Blis Technologies (NZSE: BLT) has made an interim loss of $274,000 but says it's in a stronger cash position than forecast due to progress with its strep throat treatment.

The company listed in late July and says since then it has made excellent progress both towards commercialising its first product for market launch and in developing a pipeline of products for the future.

"This progress has enabled us to make considerable savings in development costs compared to our listing forecast, particularly in respect to dose and formulation trials of the strep throat product," Blis says.

"This leaves the company in a stronger cash position by some half a million dollars at half year than was forecast at time of listing, and enables the company to put more resources into development work on our future pipeline over the next six months."

While Blis Tech is primarily known for its plan to commercialise the sore throat treatment, it also has a number of other research products on the go.

One is a tooth dental decay prevention product that it hopes to begin clinical trials on before the end of the financial year. It says the laboratory trials have been encouraging.

"We are also continuing to research other areas with a current focus on ear infection, mastitis, and development of associated antibacterial peptides.

"However we continue to screen the many other Blis producing organisms in the extensive collection owned by the company and plan to add to this list of future products over time."

Blis gained Ministry of Health approval for its strep throat lozenges at the end of last month and has completed manufacturing scale up trials and finalised a manufacturing agreement for the product.

It is currently in discussions with possible distribution partners for New Zealand and further international markets.

Blis bought a collection of several thousand organisms which produce 'bacteriocin like inhibitory substances' from the University of Otago in return for a 20% stake in the listed company and aims to mine the asset for a variety of health products.

The first is Salivaricin B, a protein believed to prevent or control streptococcal throat infections, which is being used in the company's throat lozenges.

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