iBio, Promising for World Wide Health

Accessible therapeutics, vaccines for the world? An answer to the plea may have just arrived.

“Affordable healthcare and medications for Americans,” these pleas from folks across ever-blurring socioeconomic strata here in the US are heard more often as the years roll one into another. People seek equal or better medications for our society’s ever-increasing ailments. We want, no, make that “need” medications at affordable prices. The philanthropic among us hold similar aspirations for other peoples of the world. Next, in these times of impending bioterrorism, and even blameless pandemics, government agencies search for vaccines against ever-mutating H1N1, Avian influenza, the threats of anthrax infection and unknown numbers of other deadly microbials. Those impending horrors, shouldn’t allow for everyday suffering to be overlooked – HIV/AIDS, Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), and the cancers it may cause, over 200 auto-immune related diseases, malaria, sleeping sickness and a list that could go on for pages, are likewise daily worries of what seems like the world’s increasingly ill population. 

Roughly two percent of the world’s elite just donned tinsel-wrapped crowns and welcomed 2011, the New Year, as if the subjective of a time period could possibly offer promise of better times ahead for any or all. One wonders how many New Year’s celebrants thought of the other 98% of the world’s people doing without then, now, and most likely, headed for more “doing without” in times to come. We, the world’s people, face more times of uncertainty, in more perilous aspects of life than perhaps ever before as our globe hurtles through space and that ambiguous measure we call “time.”

Life is, indeed, precious. We look to faith in a greater force, plethora cultural and religious practices, and some of us, pure science, for answers to the very real dangers the human race may face; as well, again, as others suffer relentlessly. History demonstrates that, as some search for answers to potential health cataclysms, most, in the forced scuttle of daily labors, forget the very real and horrific potentials for health hazards. This brings me to, in terms of worldwide knowledge, a thus-far fairly unrecognized company, iBio, Inc., based in Delaware, working with one of the world’s foremost names in medicine, Germany’s US-based, not-for-profit, Fraunhofer Center for Molecular Biology. 

This biopharmaceutical group is focused on advancing the use of its proprietary plant-based technology platform by which targeted proteins are being mass produced with core operational focus on biosimilars, biobetters and orphan drugs, as well as vaccine discovery, development, production and licensing (vs. the old standard of chicken eggs used for certain protein-grown vaccines, or, more recently, billion dollar bioreactors to create biopharmaceuticals, i.e., non-chemical-based medicines). iBio continues its attention on the path to more expeditiously and less expensively produced bio-drugs (think therapeutics for cancer patients, rheumatoid arthritics and diabetics). The company also has been developing a stream of vaccines as aforementioned, especially against H1N1, Avian flu, anthrax, HPV, malaria, and African sleeping sickness. In my humble opinion, iBio could well serve humanity – not merely the two percent living in relative wealth and comfort, but those in the forgotten corners of the earth, even here in the US – by licensing its methods for faster, safer, less expensive productions of biopharmaceuticals and vaccines.

iBio management members affirm decades of success working with the world’s household names of pharmaceuticals and bio-pharmaceuticals. Individually, as well as in whole, they represent rarified, stunningly superior and well-rounded backgrounds – The same is true of the board of directors and the scientific advisory board. Added to such a world-renowned list of management, and after seven years of diligent work with Fraunhofer’s US-base in Delaware (a not-for-profit arm of its parent), iBio, unlike most bio-pharma black holes sucking funding into parts unknown, has spent just over $100 million validating its plant-based platform technology. Around $33 million of its funding coming from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation targeted at Avian Influenza, malaria and African sleeping sickness (think the poorer among us); the US government, and, specifically, the Department of Defense, has placed $37.4 million in to the company’s coffers for work toward vaccine/cure for H1N1, plague-anthrax solutions. The list goes on. However, iBio’s addressable markets can easily include over $150 billion the world over, and that’s on an annualized basis. As for more related to the company’s publicly held side, iBio recently made a move from the OTCBB to the NYSE’s Amex Exchange, where they trade under the symbol “IBIO.”

The company’s proprietary technology (four US patents, 11 pending; one each granted in China and India and an additional 50 foreign patents pending) is applicable to world wide markets. The technology used is more flexible as no billion dollar reactors are needed (one may consider the plants themselves as each a mini-reactor) – This fact, from a strictly business standpoint, offers a stunningly higher profit opportunity for the company and its shareholders. Development and production of vaccine and bio-therapeutics is faster, i.e. weeks vs. months or years, and it may be comparatively easily replicated in the some of the most unforgivable climes, and perhaps never-considered parts of the world. iBio’s diversified licensing program is easily commercialized on a broad platform. The company has grown via non-dilutive financing, which promises a greater value earlier, and at lower-risk revenue for investors, current and future. Likewise, its science is promising for the betterment of the world’s people in many respects, again, in this writer’s intuitive opinion. Learn more about iBio at their website by clicking the following link: www.ibioinc.com.  Perhaps one of the greater investment opportunities the world has seen in a very long time, and one offering the great gift of better health to the world’s people – Poor and privileged alike.