NZ's Blis targets Chinese market

Dunedin biotech Blis Technologies has opened a portal into a potential AUD$200 million market by signing a deal with Auckland-based Asia-Pacific Biotech Distributors to take its antibacterial Throat Guard into China.

Under their agreement, Blis requires APBD to register, market, promote and distribute its lozenge-based treatment into Asia's largest consumer market for the maximum return possible. APBD hopes to have Throat Guard registered in China by June next year, and expects its first orders to follow. The lozenges contain a benign form of the oral commensal microbe Streptococcus pylogenes, which secretes bacteriocin-like inhibitory substances (BLISs) that actively suppress the Streptococcus strains that cause 'strep throat' -- particularly in children.

A former Melbourne University microbiologist, Assoc Prof John Tagg, now at Otago University, isolated the K12 strain used in Throat Guard from the saliva of children who seemed to be unusually resistant to recurrent throat infections.

Blis already sells Throat Guard through chemists in New Zealand, and has applied to register it for sale in Australia.

One of the first NZ biotechnology companies to launch a commercial product, it already has two more products in late-stage clinical trials, both containing user-friendly Streptococcus strains.

Trial results for a halitosis (bad breath) preventative are due out next month, but the product is already known to be very effective, according to Blis CEO Dr Kelvin Moffatt.

Results are expected in December from trials of another strain of S. pylogenes that the company has shown to reduce tooth decay.

Moffatt said Blis was pleased with the China deal. "The potential downside is that we have to rely on the performance of third party, but the contract specifies performance criteria," he said.

Moffat said Throat Guard met the preference of Asians for preventatives rather than treatments. It will be targeted to the growing number of consumers in China whose wealth is now comparable to that of middle-class consumers in Australia and New Zealand.

He said ticket price was an important consideration in marketing -- Chinese and other Asian consumers will probably buy Throat Guard in two fortnightly packs, rather than one monthly pack.