BioProgress rapt over global licensing agreement
March, UK-based, BioProgress has executed an exclusive licensing agreement for its Xgel Tabwrap dosage form technology with a US pharmaceutical company which is a global leader in the OTC medicines and Nutritionals (vitamins, minerals and supplements) product sectors.
March, UK-based, BioProgress has executed an exclusive licensing agreement for its Xgel Tabwrap dosage form technology with a US pharmaceutical company which is a global leader in the OTC medicines and Nutritionals (vitamins, minerals and supplements) product sectors.
The US pharmaceutical company, which remains confidential, has acquired an exclusive license for Tabwrap, one of the BioProgress Xgel dosage forms in a specific market sector and for the territory of North America and the European Union.
BioProgress will receive a payment of US$900,000 upon the first commercialisation and a royalty based on the licensee's sales price of all products which use the Tabwrap dosage form. The Tabwrap technology will initially be applied to a limited number of products which could be on sale before the end of 2005. Sales of the initial group of products, when fully introduced to the US market, are expected to generate royalty income for BioProgress of between $1m and US$1.5m per year. That amount could grow significantly as the Tabwrap technology is applied to higher volume products, new products and introduced into the European market in competition with old tablet coating technology.
The Tabwrap machines will be manufactured under license by the licensee and films for Tabwrap may be supplied to the licensee from the newly acquired BioProgress cGMP film facility in Tampa, Florida USA, generating further revenues and profits for the company.
To ensure that there is the security of multiple supply sources for film in North America, the US pharmaceutical company will also establish a pharmaceutical standard (cGMP) film manufacturing facility to supply their own film requirements under the exclusive license. This second facility will also exclusively supply BioProgress with film, giving BioProgress guaranteed additional cGMP film capacity in the USA as film requirements grow for all BioProgress technologies and customers in the North American market.
BioProgress CEO Graham Hind, said: 'Tabwrap is a technology designed to replace traditional tablet coating techniques by providing a non-gelatin lower-cost, faster, more efficient process. We can also manipulate the dissolution rate of the Tabwrap coating film to increase the dissolution rate of the tablet and add value to products by making the tablet active available to the body faster and facilitating a "faster acting" claim. It also enables a two-colour tablet product presentation not possible with traditional tablet coating methods, offering further product differentiation and marketing advantages over current tablet coating processes. As the Tabwrap film is made from already approved materials and the tablet cores remain unchanged, the regulatory issues are minimal and the technology adoption time and product time to market is relatively short.
'According to IRI, an independent pharmaceutical market monitor, the OTC medicines market in the US is valued at $10.8bn per annum. The European market is also extremely substantial. If our licensee is successful in securing even a modest share of this marketplace through Tabwrap, it is not unrealistic to anticipate that within a few years the BioProgress royalty stream on Tabwrap alone will be very significant.'