Investors

OptiBiotix Health plc (AIM: OPTI), a life sciences business developing compounds to tackle obesity, high cholesterol, diabetes and skin care, provides the following scientific and commercial update.

Scientific Update

OptiBiotix has made significant progress in its scientific programmes to develop compounds which modify the human microbiome to prevent, manage and treat disease. The Company believes these developments have the potential to rapidly accelerate the Company's growth. Recent developments include:

• OptiBiotix's ability to manipulate both the microbiome's composition and its function. This creates the potential for:-
  • Designer ingredients or supplements which can modify an individual's current microbiome to improve health.
  • The potential for precision microbiome medicine. This is an area of growing scientific and commercial interest with growing evidence that the microbiome plays an important role in how the body metabolises pharmaceutical products, influencing their effectiveness and the potential for adverse reactions.
• OptiBiotix has demonstrated the ability of its novel oligosaccharides (carbohydrates that consist of a small number of sugars) to reduce cholesterol in human gut models by >20%. These sugars are heat resistant and stable during processing making them suitable as ingredients in a wide range of products. This finding extends the existing product opportunity offered by OptiBiotix's LP-LDL cholesterol reducing strain from supplements to ingredients, greatly increasing the market opportunity.

The results of these studies have been submitted for publication and presentation in mainstream scientific journals and conferences throughout 2017.

Commercial Update

OptiBiotix reports that it has reached late stage commercial discussions with six commercial partners across its technology and product platforms. A number of these discussions have been ongoing for many months and have involved extensive due diligence of OptiBiotix's science, intellectual property, and the partners assessment of the scale of the market opportunity across international markets. These discussions include a number of leading industry corporate players who provide product development, manufacturing, distribution, and/or routes to global markets.

Whilst OptiBiotix cannot guarantee that all discussions will lead to commercial deals it wants to update shareholders on the ongoing commercial progress being made across all of its products and platforms.

Stephen O'Hara, CEO of OptiBiotix, commented: "The Company believes it is making strong scientific progress across all its technology and product platforms. These research findings add to the growing scientific evidence base of how OptiBiotix's technology influences the microbiome to prevent, manage, and treat disease. This helps convert existing commercial interest into commercial deals and opens up opportunities in new markets. The overall aim being to develop multiple revenue streams from both consumer and pharmaceutical products across all its technology platforms." 

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of EU Regulation 596/2014

For further information, please contact:

About OptiBiotix - www.optibiotix.com

OptiBiotix was formed in March 2012 to develop compounds which modify the human microbiome - the collective genome of the microbes in the body - to prevent and manage human disease.

The aim of OptiBiotix is to discover and develop microbial strains, compounds and formulations, which modulate the human microbiome and can be used as food ingredients and supplements or active compounds for the prevention and management of human metabolic diseases, examples of which include obesity, cholesterol and lipid distribution and diabetes.

OptiBiotix has established a pipeline of microbiome modulators that can impact on lipid and cholesterol management, energy harvest and appetite suppression. The development pipeline is fuelled by its proprietary OptiScreen® and OptiBiotic® platform technologies designed to identify metabolic pathways and compounds that impact on human physiology and bring potential health benefits. These platforms are applicable across a wider range of other human diseases.