Singapore: Kane Biotech, a biotechnology company engaged in the development and commercialization of products that prevent and remove microbial biofilms, has received a patent entitled "Antimicrobial compositions for inhibiting growth and proliferation of a microbial biofilm on medical devices" from the Japan patent office.

Biofilms are a major cause of a number of serious medical problems including chronic infections and medical device related infections. They develop on surfaces such as catheters, prosthetic implants, teeth, lungs and the urogenital tract. Biofilms are pervasive, costly to deal with and are involved in approximately 80 percent of all human bacterial infections. The healing of chronic wounds alone costs the US health care system $20 Billion per year.

This patent covers the company's Aledex technology for the antibiofilm-antimicrobial coating of medical devices to prevent hospital-acquired infections.

This is the third patent issued for Kane Biotech's Aledex technology to protect the invention of a unique and synergistic composition, which provides a broad-spectrum antibiofilm and antimicrobial activity in medical device coating applications.

"We are very pleased that our unique biofilm technology has been patented in Japan. We now have 17 issued and 34 pending patents covering our biofilm technology platforms around the world," stated Mr Gord Froehlich, president and chief executive officer of Kane Biotech.