Cordlife Group Limited (Cordlife), a Singapore Exchange mainboard-listed healthcare company, and AMILI Pte. Ltd. (AMILI), a Singapore-based microbiome organisation, announced on Tuesday a strategic partnership to provide the first-ever gut microbiome banking service in Singapore and the region.
This partnership alliances the two companies’ core specialisms—gut microbiome processing and analysis by AMILI and cryopreservation by Cordlife. Both parties said in a statement that this allows people in Singapore to store their gut microbiome for future faecal microbiota transplants (FMT).
Cordlife markets the gut microbiome banking service through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Cordlife Technologies Pte. Ltd.
Cordlife, one of Asia’s pioneers in cryopreservation of umbilical cord blood obtained from babies, sees this association as another step towards expanding its cryopreservation expertise.
As per the statement of the Cordlife Group Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director, the foundation of this strategic partnership stems from mounting evidence suggesting that FMT is a great approach for innumerable diseases such as colorectal cancer, autism spectrum disorder, and even obesity.
FMT, also called gut microbiome transplantation, is the transfer of healthy microbiomes from a healthy person into the gastrointestinal tract of a sick person in order to restore microbial balance.
With healing rates of around 90%, this transplantation is a widely accepted treatment for repeated Clostridiodes difficile (C.-diff) infection.
AMILI has established Southeast Asia’s first and only donor stool bank in 2019 in Singapore, giving patients access to gut microbiome samples from healthy donors. Since then, AMILI has supplied specimens to patients in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand who needed GMT.
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