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NXBTF Nexia Biotech (A Canadian company and thus the F at the end of the stock symbol to denote that it is one of those Foreign stocks.) .74 (Very thinly traded) Spider silk is 3x stronger than Kevlar, the material used in bullet proof vests. Unlike silk worms, you can't farm spiders for silk, because they fight and kill each other. Nexia has put the spider making gene into goats and they produce the silk coumpound in their milk. The company extracts the compound and produces spider silk by extruding it through a tiny hole into a solution that causes it to turn into a strand of spider silk. Spiders produce many differnt types of silk, depending on what part of the web that they are spinning. The company calls their silk biosteel because silk, ounce for ounce silk is 5x stronger than steel. This year the company received $500,000 dollars from the Canadian defense department. Unfortunately, the silk that they produced is not the strongest type. They are going to manufacture it to make fishing lines which will be stronger than regular fishing lines, so they will get some revenue from it. The company says that they will be able to produce the stronger type of silk sometime during 2004. They are the only company with the patents to produce spider silk. The US army is interested and so are police departments, but no contracts until they can make the stronger bullet proof vests and there is no guarentee that they can. They are also producing a genetic coumpund in goats milk, that they call Protexia and that neutralizes nerve agents. For that one, the US army did award them a $2.67 million contract this year to continue their development of the compound. But even with these contracts, the company lost $12 million this year and closed their New York facility. This will save them money, but I'm not sure how much. They have two unique products and there is NO OTHER COMPETITOR that I have found. If things work out, especially considering how our troops need good armor, they could be a big winner, or they could end up going out of business. Still, you might want to put some money into the stock.
Posts: 580 | Registered: Oct 2003
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