San Diego’s Pure Bioscience, (NASDAQ: [[ticker:PURE]]) a 25-employee company, has gained a global partner for its silver-based compound that acts as a germ-killing alternative to chlorine and other chemicals.
Pure gave exclusive marketing rights to Switzerland’s Ciba for silver dihydrogen citrate, or SDC, in Ciba personal care products worldwide. The deal also gave non-exclusive rights to Ciba for selling SDC as an antimicrobial agent and prerservative in household and industrial products.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The agreement represents a stamp of approval for Pure by a specialty chemicals giant that makes additives to improve the quality, color, strength, and other factors of consumer products. For exmple, Ciba makes the “sun protection factor” ingredient used in many sunscreen products.
Under the agreement, Ciba will be able to offer its customers Pure’s SDC as an alternative antimicrobial ingredient in soaps, lotions, and other personal products. Some consumers and environmentalists are critical about the current use in such products of formaldehyde, triclosan, and other compounds. Pure says its patented compound generates silver ions that act as a natural, less-toxic disinfectant.
In a statement, Pure CEO Michael Krall says, “Although Ciba’s focus is on only one segment of SDC’s platform technology potential, these markets are significant and fast growing.”
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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