Difference between revisions of "Team:NTU-LIHPAO-Taiwan/Entrepreneurship"

Entrepreneurship

Motivation

According to the World Health Organization research, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and obesity, accounting for 30 percent of cancer death! Obese people suffer from the risk of colorectal cancer, also 1-2 times higher than normal people.

Also Taiwan ministry of health and welfare reveals that the prevalence of obesity in Taiwanese people is the highest among Asian. About 1/2 adult male, 1/3 female, 1/4 of children are overweight or obesity. Furthermore, obesity related chronic disease also cost 500 billion NTD expense each year. Among all kinds of factor casing obesity, the biggest culprit is overeating and lack of exercising. Therefore, the first step in a healthy weight loss diet must first learn how to eat smart. To tackle this situation, we design appetite control tonic using the new development technique- oral peptide drug for absorbing directly in the gastrointestinal and peptide YY to reduce the appetite, but does not affect insulin, glucagon secretion and heath.

Product

We take note of the problem that the obesity condition in Taiwan has deteriorated. Therefore, we hope to initiate our project from the key peptide “Peptide YY (PYY)” which can control appetite, and take advantage of the probiotic characteristic of Lactobacillus casei, with cell penetrating peptides (CPP) which is prospective in oral peptide drugs. We hope that we can make Lactobacillus casei secret CPP-PYY complex becoming another newly created oral peptide drugs that help us to lose weight in a healthier way.

Our product- Healthin comprises of 2 factor, Health and Thin. We hope that once the customer take our oral peptide drug, they will regain their health can become thin rather than sacrifice their good health and ruin their body.

Just as the famous probiotic beverage Yakult, we design our product in the same way. In the product, it looks like and function like the Yakult. However, once our lactobacillus reaches intestine and senses the bile salt, it will start producing CPP-PYY complex. Besides, our lactobacillus will also have the probiotic effect just as the Yakult’s does. CPP-PYY complex will then absorb by the epidermal cell of the villi and approach blood vessel. PYY will circulate with the blood and finally bind to the Y2 receptor in the hypothalamus. Once binding, you will feel a sense of fulfillment and lessen your food intake.

We hope that our product can reduce appetite and finally achieve our goal- a healthier life which make the customer health and thin.

Market Analysis

Globesity

Globesity, a new word from global and obesity, was born in these years, which represents the problem of worldwide obesity problem has been more and more serious.

What is OBESITY and OVERWEIGHT?

Overweight and obesity are defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health. The WHO definition is:

1. A BMI greater than or equal to 30 is obesity
2. A BMI greater than or equal to 25 is overweight

What is the SITUATION of globesity?

Worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980.

In 2014, about 39% of adults aged 18 years were overweight and 13% were obese. That is, more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight , and of these over 600 million were obese.

Obesity Treatment Market

To solve the obesity problem, exercise regularly and eat healthily are the basic but the most important ways. However, the fast pace of busy life nowadays has caused people get into improper eating habits. Therefore, the obesity treatment market has been developed to help people losing weight in a faster way. Nowadays, the market has more than 15 billion US dollar sales revenue, and the market is growing rapidly.

According to the analysis of P. Driscoll, the founder of MedMarket, he simply separates the total market into drugs, devices, and so on. From the charts below, we can easily see that drugs’ market (66%) will be larger than any other else. Furthermore, GloboData estimated that the anti-obesity drugs market could reach 8.4 billion by 2022.

In the drugs of obesity treatment market, malabsorption drugs market will be the largest; however, it has been saturated and we can barely get into the market. Restriction drugs, the second large one, its market size in2013 was about 500 million US dollars and might be growing in the next 5 years. Appetite suppression drugs and restrictive drugs are the third large market. Though the appetite suppression drugs market is a little smaller than restrictive drugs market, its market growth rate is better. As for safiety drugs, its market size is small now but might grow in the future.

Target Market

From the market analysis, we can confirm that the anti-obesity drugs market has a promising future. Among this market, we think that appetite suppression drugs and restrictive drugs are more potential. Consequently, we decided to focus on appetite suppression drugs.

Product Analysis

Competitor Analysis

Investor

Lihpao Life Science

LIHPAO LIFE SCIENCE, is famous for developing a special Lactobacillus vector that can express genes in particular Lactobacillus and eukaryotic cells. In addition, this research may lead to cellular immune response mechanisms that are poisonous to cancer cells and to produce tumor-specific antibodies humoral immunity. Therefore, its effect is more effective and sustainable than traditional protein or peptide vaccine that only produce antibodies without the ability to attack.

Since LIHPAO LIFE SCIENCE is familiar with operating experiment in the Lactobacillus casei, we think they are the good partner and investor. We proposed our implementation plan and acquire lots of assistance, from equipment, patent vector, core technology to finance.

Furthermore, we will keep working with LIHPAO LIFE SCIENCE after the igem jamboree 2015 to perfect our product and idea. We hope we could finally commercialize it.

References

References

[1] World Health Organization, Fact sheet N°311, January 2015 ( Link: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/ )

[2] MedMarket Diligence, LLC; Report #S835, “Products, Technologies and Markets Worldwide for the Clinical Management of Obesity, 2011-2019”