Exclusive | Bacteria for piglets and Chinese infants spur Li Ka-shing’s gut instinct to put his money behind this US biomedical firm
- Infants increasingly lack beneficial gut bacteria due to Caesareans, formula feeding, antibiotics
- Piglets have a hard start in life, and trial will get under way in China to see if product can toughen them up
A company backed by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing has reintroduced a missing beneficial gut bacteria to more than 10,000 American babies. Now it is eyeing China’s babies – and piglets.
Evolve BioSystems, a California probiotics products developer, is in talks with Zhejiang University to conduct clinical trials on more than 4,000 pigs this year in the province to improve stock survival rates and cure gut diseases in piglets, said chief executive Timothy Brown.
It is also seeking to reintroduce the Bifidobacterium longum bacteria to Chinese infants’ guts through a powder mixed with liquid. It is in talks with potential partners to develop sales in mainland China, and aims to introduce its product in Hong Kong in a few months at Queen Mary Hospital’s neo-natal intensive care unit to establish credibility and pave the way for a mass market launch.
The vast majority of babies born in developed nations and increasingly in developing nations like China and Brazil are missing the bacteria, due to rising Caesarean deliveries, formula feeding and antibiotics usage, said Evolve chief chairman and chief scientific officer David Kyle.
The push comes as Beijing tries to reduce the use of antibiotics in the food industry that contributes to the proliferation of antibiotics-resistant diseases in humans. Some 84,000 tonnes of antibiotics are fed to animals annually in China, much of it to pigs. China is the world’s largest pork producer.