Nightingale deepens its cooperation with BioBank Japan

Translation: Original comment published in Finnish on 10/28/2021 at 9:40 am.

Nightingale Health announced that it had agreed on long-term cooperation with BioBank Japan (BBJ). According to the release BBJ is one of the largest disease biobanks in the world with more than 200,000 blood samples. This cooperation is a continuum on the pilot phase started about a year ago, in which more than 10,000 samples have been analyzed so far. The aim of the cooperation is to identify typical factors related to disease risks for the Japanese population and create better preconditions for personalized medicine and disease prevention in Japan.

In the cooperation, the biomarker data from Nightingale’s proprietary blood analysis is provided to BBJ to advance medical research. According to Nightingale, its technology used around the world also helps to understand ethnic differences by comparing these large datasets. According to the release, the first results of the cooperation have already validated the applicability of Nightingale’s disease risk detection models for the Japanese population. According to Nightingale, the company and BBJ expect to publish more research results in the areas of personalized medicine and preventative health as the long-term cooperation continues.

In our view, new and expanding biobank cooperation will widen the moat of Nightingale’s technology. Using the same technology to examine the health risks of the populations in different regions allows regional comparisons, which brings an advantage to the technology used to analyze most and more extensive samples compared to the competition. Over time, the growing cooperation will also improve the conditions for commercialization of Nightingale’s technology in Japan, as its health risk assessments can be extended to include more of the Japanese population's own influences.

We believe that Nightingale is well placed to maintain its strong position as a provider of preventive healthcare services based on blood samples. However, the key to the company's investment story and value creation is how well the services built with this approach can generate consumer interest and create revenue streams, and ultimately also prevent diseases in the longer term. We believe that visibility into this will only improve over time as commercialization progresses.