Sirona Biochem rises as it pencils deal with Chinese pharma

Shares of Canada’s Sirona Biochem (TSX-V: SBM) were up more than 14% at C$0.41 in mid-morning trading, after it revealed the signing of a Letter of Intent (LoI) with Chinese company Beijing Huaxi Pharma, to engage in a collaborative effort to bring Sirona's product pipeline to commercial-ready stage for the global market.

Huaxi Pharm will co-develop on all steps to complete full commercialization of the products created by Sirona. This includes pre-clinical, clinical development, regulatory, commercial scale up and manufacturing for commercial applications of Sirona's compounds for indications mutually agreed upon in the definitive agreement. Huaxipharm will receive a determined percentage ownership of the commercialized product for global sales as results of its inputs in the process of product commercialization.

"After screening the worldwide market for promising collaboration partners for quite some time, we were pleased to get introduced to Sirona Biochem and quickly realized the enormous potential of their platform technology. We are looking forward to finalizing our due diligence and definitive agreement as soon as possible so that we can get to work in bringing new and innovative Sirona compounds to the market," said Dr Hua Bi, chief executive of Beijing Huaxi Pharma.