"All the shareholders of Filgen will become shareholders of that company. (Like a stock swap), for every Filgen share, they’ll give us so much share of the company," said Dr. Ben De Lumen, FGB chairman, in an interview during the International Conference on Biotechnology Enterprise and Investment.

The value of the investments in the soy-based drug has gone up since FGB started developing it six years ago originally under a partnership between the University of California Berkeley and seven private company investors in the US.

But De Lumen refused to disclose the name of the investing firm nor the amount of investments eyed.

It is expected that lunasin will become available within one year initially over the counter as a vitamin which will have an affordable price.

With a partnership with the University of Alabama and perhaps with the Philippine General Hospital in the Philippines for clinical trials over the next five to 10 years, the product may be subsequently considered a therapeutic drug once the Food and Drug Administration approves it.

Lunasin has been developed with a million seed money and a million fund from angel investors and venture capitalists.

De Lumen, a professor at the UC Berkeley’s Department of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology, said clinical trials for cancer therapy will be done on cervical, prostate, and colon cancer.

Lunasin was found to prevent cancer based on a mechanism that the novel cancer preventive peptide (a small protein), first discovered in soy and later on found also in other seeds, guards cells at all tissues of the body and prevents cell division of abnormal cancer cells.

With its fast approach at stopping abnormal cell reproductions, a recommended dosage of at least 50 grams of soy per day was found to have caused a proven record of the absence of cancer in heavy soy-consuming populations in China, Japan, and Taiwan.

De Lumen merely stumbled on the discovery of soy protein as a cancer-preventive agent.

His laboratory really meant to enhance the nutritional quality of soy protein and other legumes through bioengineering. This was supposed to be done by increasing the level of methionine, the essential amino acid that is most limiting in soy and other legumes such as the mung bean.

AS de Lumen made the "fateful decision" of cloning the methionine-rich protein (MRP), rather than another option of getting the source of the MRP gene from another plant, he then tripped on the soy protein’s ability to arrest cancer cell’s fast reproduction.

While effectively killing cancer cells, normal intake of lunasin on a daily basis does not harm other normal body cells.

"Lunasin selectively kills cells that are being attacked by carcinogenic agents while leaving other cells unharmed by interfering with the unfolding of the chromosome that is necessary for cell proliferation," he said.

A patent had been obtained by UC Berkeley for lunasin, and 14 patents worldwide had also been granted to lunasin including those in Canada, Japan, Singapore and European Union as a requirement for FGB’s commercialization of the product.

Aside from de Lumen, the cancer-preventive agent was developed by two other Filipino graduate students from the University of the PhilippinesLos Banos.

These are Dr. Jamie Revilleza who contributed to the purification of the MRP from soy as part of the gene cloning and also Dr. Alfredo Galvez, a postdoctoral scientist who took over the project and found the cancer-preventive effect of the lunasin peptide.

"While it was not by design that the major contributors to lunasin discovery were both Filipinos, it is a source of price to point this out," said de Lumen.

Lunasin is a natural molecule that comes from soy, barley, and other seeds, and even from beer.

De Lumen is proud that lunasin is just one of the many scientific discoveries developed at the UC Berkeley where start-up ventures blossomed into full-blown businesses that bring huge revenues to California.

And this is because universities, private sector, and government collaborated for the success of the scientific works.

Biotechnology companies, he stressed, gives California .5 billion in annual revenue, .4 billion in research and development fund, and 60,000 jobs.

Fully supportive of biotechnology research and development, the state of California provides a counterpart fund of for every {{MB:DR(ARTICLE:CONTENT):MB}}.50 fund from UC Berkeley while the state legislature matches another of the funds.

AS a policy, royalty revenues from an intellectual property right goes to UC Berkeley by 30 percent, to the Department of the inventor, 30 percent, and to the investor, 30 percent.