Pressure BioSciences (PBIO) Enters New Market with New Products Offering - Analyst Blog

Grant Zeng, CFA

 
On December 13, 2010, Pressure BioSciences, Inc. (PBIO) announced the availability of three novel products targeted primarily for the drug discovery and development market. The new products were released at the 50thAnnual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in Philadelphia, which began on Sunday December 12, 2010. Approximately 10,000 biologists from academia, government, the biotechnology industry, and pharmaceutical companies are expected to attend the ASCB meeting.

Two of the Company's new products mitochondrial kits are focused on the isolation of mitochondria from solid tissues, such as skeletal muscle and lung.  Mitochondria are small structures found inside most human and animal cells, which play a major role in generating the energy required to power most cell processes and are involved in other important cell functions. Currently, the extraction of mitochondria from solid tissue, such as lung and skeletal muscle, is done using labor-intensive methods that require extensive operator experience, usually resulting in high variability among researchers. PBIO's newly released mitochondrial kits contain all of the chemical ingredients necessary for a scientist to extract mitochondria from skeletal muscle and lung tissue for subsequent analysis. When paired with The SHREDDER SG3, mitochondrial kits offer researchers a semi-automated, rapid, and reproducible method that will generate high quality mitochondria preparations for analysis.

The third new product is a small, portable instrument The SHREDDER SG3 developed in conjunction with the mitochondrial kits, to allow for a safe, rapid, efficient, and standardized method to isolate mitochondria from human and animal cells. The SHREDDER SG3 uses a similar, proprietary consumable as the Company's pressure cycling technology (PCT) platform. The Company believes that in addition to the use of this instrument with the new mitochondrial kits, The SHREDDER SG3 can also be used for a multitude of other sample preparation processes by an estimated 80,000 research laboratories and 450,000 research scientists working in the biological sciences worldwide.

The study of mitochondria and its functions has been one of the key focuses in biological science. Mitochondria have been implicated in several human diseases, including heart disease, stroke, Parkinson's disease, cancer, and other mitochondrial diseases. Mitochondria might also play a role in aging. Therefore, the release of these three new products by PBIO is appropriate at the ASCB meeting. These new products offer many advantages to current methods for the extraction of mitochondria from skeletal muscle and lung, including convenience, reproducibility, and cost savings. Therefore, we believe these new products will be well received by the scientists attending the ASCB meeting, particularly those working in the drug discovery and development area.

We believe the new mitochondria market has great potential. The new products will generate new revenue for the Company in the coming quarters. Also, we believe this new and exciting sample preparation market will increase awareness of PBIO's core PCT technology and products, which will open new doors for the Company in 2011 and beyond.

PBIO's PCT Platform Technology Featured in Round Table Discussion

Recently, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News (GEN) and the Venture Development Center (VDC) at the University of Massachusetts Boston co-sponsored a roundtable discussion on new ways to use biological solutions to assist in environment clean-up after manmade or natural disasters which is called "Gulf Oil Spill: Using Modern-day Biology to Assess the Environmental Impact and to Help in Remediation”.

The panel members are well known scientists and researchers in prestigious national laboratories including John Farrington, UMass Dartmouth & Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (Emeritus); Olivia Mason, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Doug Bartlett, Scripps Oceanographic Institute; Juanita Urban-Rich, UMASS Boston; and Richard T. Schumacher, Pressure BioSciences, Inc.

During the roundtable, scientists from academia and industry discussed the effectiveness of biological methods and tools that could help improve the understanding of the marine environment, assess the impact that oil spills of any magnitude have on this complex yet delicate ecosystem, and help monitor the effectiveness and even be part of the clean-up procedure during remediation.

PBIO's PCT platform technology was discussed in the round table discussion as an effective method for improvement of the analysis of microorganisms in environments with low biomass, such as oil reservoirs or deep sea oil plumes from oil spills.

Due to its many advantages to existing sample preparation technologies, PBIO's PCT platform technology may become a choice in the oil clean up field and many other applications. As a result, the Company signed a collaboration agreement with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in August 2010.
 
We believe the application in this field could lead to increased installation of the Company's equipment and the consumption of its consumables which in turn will ultimately translate into top line growth.

We have an Outperform rating on the Company's shares with a price target of $5 per share. 

For a copy of the full research report, please email scr@zacks.com with the ticker PBIO as the title.