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Other Small cap news...
AFC Energy ticks up 9% thanks to key Australian deal
AFC Energy ticks up 9% thanks to key Australian deal
- Shares in AFC Energy (ticker: AFC) jump 9% as Australia’s Linc Energy (ASX:LNC) says it will use AFC’s novel fuel cell systems.
- Synthetic hydrogen from Linc's Underground Coal Gasification projects will be fed into the fuel cells to produce power. Clean distilled water will be a by-product.
- “The future of this concept is simply staggering, said Linc’s chief executive Peter Bond. “It could easily be the ultimate answer for clean coal power many of us are looking for, and it's only one to two years away from reality.”
If you want to create a successful business the best place to start is to identify a need and work out how to address it.
I’ve been over this important point once or twice recently as it has been a common denominator of a number of my share recommendations. I was reminded of it again while listening to a Radio Four programme the other evening.
The programme was about transplant organs and the life and death dilemmas that doctors face concerning the usability of donor organs.
As one doctor pointed out, the perfect donor for a liver, a kidney, a heart or a lung is a young, healthy person. But such people are the least likely to die.
Young people who have died in road accidents generally provide the healthiest organs for transplant. But the number of road accidents is decreasing every year.
The problem is this: demand for organs is constantly rising, but the supply of healthy, usable organs is shrinking. What this means is that doctors are faced with difficult decisions about the use of specific organs.
Would you, for example, be happy to have a new kidney donated by somebody who was over eighty years old? Would you like to receive a new heart from somebody who was a drug addict, or suffered from Aids?
These are exactly the type of dilemmas facing doctors each and every day. What is the answer?
Personally I would support an ‘opt-out’ scheme whereby everyone is assumed to be a willing donor unless they specify otherwise. Failing this we can at least try to make better use of those organs that are willingly donated.
Unfortunately, though, many donated organs are never used. Although doctors are being pushed towards using organs from less than ideal donors, they are reluctant to do so.
To an extent this could be overcome if doctors could judge not only the age and medical background of the donor, but also better assess the condition of the donated organ. This is difficult because an organ deteriorates while in transit from one body to another in a way that cannot be measured.
Organs are still transported in boxes of ice. It’s a method that has barely changed over the 30-year history of organ transplants. But as the problem of the lack of donor organs grows, its limits are beginning to be recognised.
The race is on to answer this urgent medical need
What is needed is a way of carrying live organs that preserves them better and also allows for a monitoring of their condition. And this is the sort of need I was referring to at the start of today’s Penny Sleuth.
After many years of research new products are at last coming on to the market. Basically these try to mimic the conditions of the body, feeding the organ with warm blood or other nutrients and maintaining them in a functioning state.
These new systems can also monitor the condition of the organ during transit. They constantly deliver this information to the surgeon and give him the reassurance that he needs.
These new devices cannot increase the number of donors, but they can ensure that more donated organs are actually used. The demand for such innovation is huge and extends across the entire globe. It’s clear that this sort of know-how could turn a company into a major success.
So who is developing them? This is a highly specialised field. TransMedics, a private company based in Massachusetts, is one. But there is a second, and you have the opportunity to buy its shares and profit from its success.
This is what the US National Center of Biotechnology Information has to say about its lead products: “According to our internal confidential review, these products demonstrated a strong likelihood of technical feasibility, efficacy and cost effectiveness.
“They are also expected to be unique to the market or first in the market and are protected by a very strong proprietary position due to the company’s aggressive pursuit of patents and technology licensing.
“The time to market should be less than five years because regulatory hurdles are relatively low and much of the hardware is available off the shelf.
“These products not only prospectively fulfil an unmet need in potentially large markets (namely the entire field of tissue engineered biological products and xenogeneic organs), but also have more immediate markets for shipment of highly perishable biomedical materials such as stem cells and organ transplants.”
In short, this is a product that could save many lives, and it should make the company that invented it a whole lot of money. To find out more about it, you’ll need to read the December issue of Red Hot Penny Shares.
Good investing,
Tom Bulford
For The Penny Sleuth
P.P.S. If you want to follow the insights of a small company investor, and uncover the hidden gems of the stock market, find out more about The Penny Sleuth by clicking here.
