Mr. Edwards: GeneMedix was founded in 1997 to develop, manufacture and market a range of generic versions of therapeutic proteins using recombinant DNA technology. We're establishing low-cost base manufacturing facilities with the intention of putting quality systems in place that will meet international pharmaceutical standards, and that will allow us to be a global provider of these biopharmaceuticals. Our founder and Non-Executive chairman, Dr Kim Tan, created the business concept behind the company in 1995 and personally started to fund research work at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry. The company has now acquired the worldwide rights to six high-expression cell-lines for the production of generic pharmaceutical products, and we've targeted a number of large market-value products that are not patent-protected in several markets and have patent expiries shortly in other territories. We intend that the products will initially be marketed in China, the ASEAN territories, India and Eastern Europe via distribution agreements.
TWST: The corporate milestones: what have they been?
Mr. Edwards: After the company was founded in 1997, all the development
work was funded by the founders. We raised our first tranche of external
money in December 1999, when we raised about GBP1.1 million with private
individuals. That was around the time I came on board. In January 2000,
we were listed on the Ofex market trading facility, where we traded from
January right up to November last year. In June we raised a further
GBP3.3 million from a private placement in the UK and Singapore; and in
November we raised a further GBP20 million gross - GBP13 million in
London and GBP7 million in Singapore, raising 18.5 million net; and are
currently listing on the London and Singapore stock exchanges. We're the
first concurrent dual listing on those two exchanges, and also we were
the first biotech company listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange.
Tickers included in this excerpt: GMX.L
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