OptiBiotix Health enters MoU with Taiwan's Bened Biomedical

Life sciences business OptiBiotix Health said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Bened Biomedical of Taiwan on Wednesday.

The AIM-traded firm said the MoU would set the framework for a “strategic partnership” to explore licensing and sales opportunities and the potential of combining relevant assets over the next 12 months.

It said Bened Biomedical was founded in 2015 as a spin-off from National Yang-Ming University by Professor Tsai, Ying-Chieh.

Bened is a leading probiotic research and marketing company, developing microbiome-based products for neuropsychological, allergic, immunological, metabolic and aging-related disorders.

In the past two years, its flagship psychobiotic PS128 products - which reportedly help improve mental and emotional health - had been sold through both online and offline channels in more than 10 countries, generating revenues in the excess of $2m.

OptiBiotix said the MoU provided a 12-month period to explore opportunities relating to its own cholesterol and blood pressure reducing LPLDL strain and Bened's PS128, a psychobiotic that had shown encouraging results in reducing anxiety and depression in animal studies.

“We are pleased to announce this strategic partnership with Bened Biomedical and see a strong rationale for both companies to work together based on a complementary understanding of the science in different application areas of the microbiome,” said OptiBiotix chief executive officer Stephen O'Hara.

“We are excited by recent advances in psychobiotics which have the potential to address a range of mental and emotional health issues such as anxiety, depression, autism and Parkinson's.

“We strongly believe Bened's scientific and commercial capabilities in psychobiotics creates potential for OptiBiotix to bring new products to new markets and extend both our product offering and global reach in the microbiome field to bring better science and better health to all.”

Frankie Cheng, chief executive officer of Bened Biomedical, said that OptiBiotix operated in a “very exciting and progressive” area that had the potential to bring “real” health benefits.

“It has exciting products with strong science and clinical studies which we believe can be commercialised successfully through our distribution capability,” Cheng added.

“We see mutual benefit in OptiBiotix's commercial advances in Europe and US as a way to bring our PS128 product to a wider audience.”