imugene get huge wrap on global poultry site, page-24

re: hughes 101 - imugene will ignite soon hughes101, have posted herewith a copy of article from September 2004 which should give you something to work on when trying to evaluate CMQ when compared to IMU and vice-versa etc.
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Int’l - Australian Firms Develop Antibiotic-Free Products for Poultry

Australian companies are hoping to capture a share of an emerging multi-billion dollar worldwide industry by pioneering products that make chickens large and healthy without having to pump them full of antibiotics.

One company, Chemeq Ltd (ASX:CMQ), has a product that has only just gone to market, while another, Imugene Ltd (ASX:IMU), hopes it will be able to make about a $A1 billion ($US717.3 million) a year when its product is marketed a year or two down the track.

A third listed company, BioDiem (ASX:BDM), is in the early stages of its product development.

Antibiotics are usually given to chickens in low doses to promote growth and to prevent them from catching diseases, which can cause massive losses of production for farmers.
However, the low doses don't kill all the bacteria, allowing the most resistant bacteria to grow and potentially develop into superbugs, which could infect humans.

"The development of resistant germs is a huge danger threatening to make the antibiotics primarily designed for us (humans) no longer effective," said Chemeq chief executive Dr Graham Melrose.

"We would be in danger of being back to where we were before World War Two. A minor infection could be very serious."

Chemeq's product is a polymeric antimicrobial, which can be put in chicken feed or water.

It kills bacteria without entering the bloodstream of the chicken, making it safe for human consumption.

Chemeq has built a factory south of Perth to manufacture the product and made its first sale, worth A$1.5 million, last month to a South African agent for poultry producers.

Dr Melrose said there was a "huge" market in replacement antibiotics that he hoped his company could tap into.

Imugene's managing director Dr Warwick Lamb said there were about 46 billion chickens produced each year around the world.

"Practically all chickens in commercial production sheds around the world are fed antibiotics," Dr Lamb said.

"When (the antibiotics) are progressively removed... the producers are going to lose three or four per cent of their production, so they are looking at ways of replacing that."

Imugene is developing a productivity enhancer that can be added to water to make chickens grow bigger, and the product has already undergone eight clinical trials.

The trials showed the product resulted in an average weight increase of 7.5 per cent or 130 grams per chicken.

Dr Lamb said the timing of when the product goes to market was largely under the control of global animal health company Merial Ltd, which has taken an option over Imugene's product as part of an agreement.

"Our predictions are for mid to late 2006 to 2007," Dr Lamb said.

He said he hoped to make about $1 billion a year from the product "at the top end" of his estimates.

Both Chemeq and Imugene are also developing antibiotic replacements for pigs as well.

BioDiem is in the early stages of developing an antimicrobial called BDM-I to target a specific chicken disease.

Source: Yahoo Asia News
Published: 9/29/2004

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