Estimated Market for Vancomycin, and Estimated Opportunity for Viridax's™ Products to Displace Vancomycin in the Antimicrobials Market.
 

The international infectious disease therapeutics market grew from about $16 billion in 1991 to more than $43 billion in 2002, and it continues to grow. The US market share has grown from about 31 % to about 37%, while the Japanese market share has declined from about 26% to about 21 %. The European market share and the markets in the rest of the world have remained nearly stable during that period, with Europe represented by about a 28% market share, and the rest of the world about 15%. The US market share for new-generation antibiotics alone is anticipated to exceed $12 billion within the next year. This phenomenal growth continues in spite of the fact that bacteria have now developed resistance to nearly all of the antibiotic agents that represent the product growth leaders. This has led to a continual stream of new antibiotic products introduced to the market, many of which have a greatly shortened product life as a direct result of the more-rapid development of resistance by the target infectious bacteria.

The medical community, including national and international public health agencies, has been urging and supporting the biomedical research community to expand their efforts to identify new technologies and products employing novel mechanisms of action against infectious bacteria. The underlying technology surrounding Viridax’s products is anticipated to yield multiple new therapeutic agents for the treatment of sensitive and resistant forms of various intracellular bacterial diseases. The development and marketing of new antibacterial therapeutic products that have novel mechanisms of action are less likely to elicit the development of resistance, and will represent one of the most substantial market opportunities and perhaps some of the most medically useful products in modern human health care.

In US hospitals it is estimated that perhaps 3,000,000 patients are infected each year by bacterial pathogens, and from 80,000 to 100,000 people die from infections, compared with a yearly mortality of about 8,000 in the early 1990s by infectious diseases. About 90% of Staphylococcal infections, which are responsible for about 15% of all bacterial infections, are now resistant to Penicillin, and more than 40% are resistant to methicillin (Some reports suggest 65%).