Business
Canada's Kane Biotech Aims To Speed Up Wound Healing
Jul. 20, 2011 (Baystreet.ca) -- A small Canadian biotech company was named to be among the "...
About this update from Kane Biotech Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"\nCanada's Kane Biotech Aims To Speed Up Wound Healing\n\n Jul. 20, 2011 (Baystreet.ca) -- A small Canadian biotech company was named to be among the \"Top 10 Most Innovative\" biotech companies for its biofilm dispersant technology. With a market cap of around $10M this looks like an attractive small-cap investment opportunity. To get a better sense of Kane Biotech Inc. (TSX Venture:KNE) progress and future outlook, we interviewed Kane's CEO, Mr. Gord Froehlich. Kane Biotech is a small biotechnology company engaged in the development of products to prevent and disperse biofilms. Biofilms are a major cause of a number of serious medical problems including chronic infections and medical device related infections. They develop on surfaces such as catheters, prosthetic implants, teeth, lungs and the urogenital tract. Biofilms are pervasive, costly to deal with and approximately 80% of all human bacterial infections involve biofilms. The healing of chronic wounds alone costs the United States health care system $20 billion per year. Question: Gord can you please tell us a little bit about how you came up with this unique idea for an anti-biofilm product, and why is it so important.Gord: The idea really belongs to our CSO, Dr. Sri Madhyastha, who noticed that there was a lot of research done on finding better ways of killing the harmful bacteria, while nobody was really focusing on the environment that the bacteria thrive in. Biofilm is like a slime that builds up very quickly on almost any wet surface. In healthcare, biofilm presents a huge problem as it constantly builds on medical devices and open wounds. Once the biofilm is formed, the bacteria gets embedded in this biofilm, and antibodies cannot penetrate the environment to kill the bacteria. Dr. Sri's idea was to disrupt this biofilm habitat, thereby weakening the bacteria to the point where it can be easily dealt with. This research is of immense importance as currently there is a $4 bn market for products specifically for treating healing wounds. If you count the auxiliary costs of hospital stays, the cost on our society is enormous and probably costs us $20 bn annually. Current treatment options are made up of all kinds of products including physical scraping of the biofilm surface with a scalpel. None of it really works, so you see a biofilm dispersant could have a dramatic...