Australian healthcare company Stirling Products Limited (STI) advises that the Company and Zodiac Capital Limited, its joint venture partner in pharmaceutical and botanical products, have entered into a final Agreement with Sheiman Ultrasonic Research Foundation Pty Ltd. Under the Agreement, the Stirling/Zodiac joint venture has acquired the rights to commercialise a patented new class of drug inhalation devices that represent a breakthrough platform in drug delivery. Initial validation and independent testing of drug administration using prototype demonstration devices has shown this High Density Aerosol (HDA) technology to be highly efficient and effective in delivering drugs via inhalation. The major benefit of drug administration through the HDA technology is that it promises to provide the same efficacy as drugs taken orally, with far less active drug content which, subject to formal trial validation, should therefore increase drug safety and substantially lessen any side effects. The HDA technology offers a significant opportunity for the Stirling Products joint venture to target a multi-billion revenue market as it leverages its new technology to improve the safety profile of and thereby exclusively use this safer profile of some of the world’s major drugs as they come off patent. This is particularly relevant as in the five year period from 2007 to 2012 over 36 major drugs will come off patent which is expected to lower yearly product sales of the major pharmas in the US by around US$67 billion, and more than double this amount globally.
Stirling Products Limited Managing Director, Mr Peter Boonen, stated: “This HDA technology is absolutely unique in its effectiveness and potential. It will provide a platform for the Company to potentially enhance its own product lines and also to leverage the technology into some of the world’s most valuable drugs that are off-patent or coming off-patent. Through this technology we can effectively have the exclusive rights to, subject to trial validation, the improved version of each of the off-patent drug candidates that we undertake. This potential opportunity for having exclusivity over numerous off-patent blockbuster drugs with the HDA version potentially having their performance and safety profiles enhanced is unmatched in the pharmaceutical industry.”
The key terms of Agreement between the Company, Zodiac Capital and Sheiman Ultrasonic Research Foundation provide for the Company and Zodiac Capital to each pay $250,000 (which payment has been satisfied by the respective issue of shares) and for the Stirling/Zodiac joint venture to provide for all the staged funding costs of the commercialisation process commencing immediately. The first stage over the next 12 months shal be the pre-production development of the first HDA devices which has budgeted costs of circa $600,000. The testing of targeted major off-patent drugs for human use using the HDA inhalation devices is planned to commence in approximately 12 months and is conditional upon the arrangement or provision of a working budget of $5-6 mil ion which is intended to be secured through a series of grants that the Company expects to have in place by that time. The Sheiman Ultrasonic Research Foundation shal receive 35% interest in the gross profits derived from the sale of all HDA devices, 35% of gross profits from the sale of any or all off- patent drugs adapted for use in the new HDA platform, subject to regulatory approvals that may be required for such use, and 5% of the gross sales profits of the Company’s products that are adapted for use through the technology.
www.stirlingproducts.net
