SeeThruEquity Issues Update on Vitality Biopharma, Inc. (OTCQB: VBIO)

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / August 29, 2016 / SeeThruEquity, a leading independent equity research and corporate access firm focused on smallcap and microcap public companies, today announced it has issued an update on Vitality Biopharma, Inc. (OTCQB: VBIO).

The report is available here: VBIO August 2016 Update Note.

We are updating our coverage of Stevia First Corp. to reflect the company’s shift in strategy and its July 2016 name change to Vitality Biopharma, Inc. (OTCQB: VBIO, “Vitality Biopharma”). The Vitality Biopharma brand reflects a pivot by management to focus its efforts on the development of cannabinoids for the treatment of serious neurological and inflammatory disorders. Initially, Vitality Biopharma has identified multiple sclerosis and inflammatory bowel disease as target markets.

These represent large market opportunities, with approximately 1.4mn Americans living with inflammatory bowel disease and more than 400,000 Americans suffering from MS. Concurrent with the company’s official name change to Vitality Biopharma, the company also completed a 10:1 reverse split and updated its ticker to OTCQB: VBIO. In our view, the market potential for the company’s new line of cannabinoid prodrugs represents a large and attractive opportunity if VBIO management is able to execute on its regulatory and commercialization plans over the next several years. We are updating our price target to $2.00 reflecting the new share count and strategic focus.

Additional highlights from the update note are as follows:

Stevia First becomes Vitality Biopharma, enters cannabinoid prodrugs market

In July 2016 Stevia First changed the name of its parent company to Vitality Biopharma, Inc. In a letter to investors, management explained the move by both acknowledging that its commercialization efforts for stevia had proven to be more difficult and take longer than originally expected, and also highlighting that it had identified a large new market in which it could leverage significant technologies developed in its pursuit of stevia: cannabinoid pharmaceutical prodrugs. Specifically, Vitality Biopharma discovered that stevia UGT enzymes could be used to enable the production of a new class of cannabinoid prodrugs. The market for legal marijuana / cannabis is growing; IMS Health estimate legal marijuana sales at $2.57 billion in 2014, while the synthetic cannabinoid market was pegged at $133mn.

Initially targeting MS, inflammatory bowel disease

Vitality Biopharma has already internally produced more than 20 novel cannabinoid glycosides, or cannabosides, using this process. These act as part of a class of medications known as “prodrugs,” which are essentially compounds administered in an inactive form but that become a pharmacologically active once they are metabolized. There are many advantages to Vitality Biopharma’s approach to the cannabinoid market using prodrugs, including better targeting, better dosing, a lower risk regulatory pathway, and the ability to leverage the clinical investigation history of the reference drug. Vitality Biopharma will initially be focused on developing prodrug therapeutics with multiple sclerosis and inflammatory bowel disease as target markets, and is expected to commence Phase 1 / Phase 2 trials in each of these areas in 2017E.

Updating price target to $2.00

We are updating our price target to reflect a reverse split undertaken by the company as well as new assumptions for the value of the cannabinoid and businesses. We see Vitality Biopharma as a company that offers both high risk and high growth potential as it targets the fast-growing emerging market for cannabinoid pharmaceutical prodrugs.

Please review important disclosures at www.seethruequity.com.

About Vitality Biopharma, Inc.

Vitality Biopharma is dedicated to unlocking the power of cannabinoids for the treatment of serious neurological and inflammatory disorders. For more information, visit: www.vitality.bio.

About SeeThruEquity

Since its founding in 2011, SeeThruEquity has been committed to its core mission: providing impactful, high quality research on underfollowed smallcap and microcap equities. SeeThruEquity has pioneered an innovative business model for equity research that is not paid for and is unbiased. SeeThruEquity is the host of acclaimed investor conferences that are the ultimate event for publicly traded companies with market capitalizations less than $1 billion.

SeeThruEquity is approved to contribute its research reports and estimates to Thomson One Analytics (First Call), the leading estimates platform on Wall Street, as well as Capital IQ and FactSet. SeeThruEquity maintains one of the industry’s most extensive databases of opt-in institutional and high net worth investors. The firm is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan in New York City.

For more information visit www.seethruequity.com.

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SOURCE: SeeThruEquity

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