Leader in drug information tracking and brand protection joined by Dr. Ge Li, Chairman and CEO of WuXi PharmaTech, and Gregory S. Leong, Partner at Arocrest Company
Honolulu, HI — May 19, 2015 — TruTag Technologies, Inc., the innovator of an uniquely edible security platform that addresses the trillion-dollar global opportunity for food safety and traceability, drug information tracking and brand protection, today announced the appointment of Dr. Ge Li and Gregory S. Leong to its Board of Directors.
TruTag microtags (“TruTags®”) are inert and can integrate into the fabric of a product without packaging or labels – much like fingerprints on a human being – for the authentication of edible items such as food and drugs, as well as electronics, consumer products, and industrial components. The TruTag technology platform will fundamentally impact food and medicine safety, drug data tracking, and patient compliance. The entire drug package insert information, for example, can be associated with the encoded TruTags applied to the surface of every pill.
Dr. Ge Li, is a Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of WuXi PharmaTech (NYSE: WX), a leading open-access R&D capability and technology platform company building an alternative R&D engine to serve the global life-science industry. WuXi is designed to help worldwide customers shorten the discovery and development time and lower the cost of drug and medical device R&D. WuXi has over 9,000 employees with presence both in China and in the United States and more 2,000 customers, including virtually all of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies by revenue. WuXi Pharmatech Healthcare Fund I, WuXi’s corporate venture fund, is an investor in TruTag.
“TruTag has a revolutionary technology platform to address significant needs in the pharmaceutical industry,” said Dr. Li. “The challenge of the ability to track drug data, improve patient compliance, and combat counterfeit and diverted drugs is substantial, and to have a technology that can authenticate the drug itself on every pill without labels or package is a game-changer.”
Mr. Gregory S. Leong is a Partner and Investment Director at Arocrest Company, a multifamily office investment firm based in Hong Kong. He has nearly 20 years of corporate finance and private equity investment experience, and was most recently with the International Finance Corporation (IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group). Prior to IFC, Mr. Leong worked with Blackstone and J.P. Morgan.
“I am honored to be part of the TruTag Board to help this dynamic company scale its business globally,” said Mr. Leong. “We believe that TruTag has great potential in pharmaceutical and in any industry with high-volume, high-value products or components that are often life mission critical. I look forward to actively assisting the company expand its business in a broad array of key market verticals.”
“We are very pleased to have Dr. Li and Mr. Leong join our Board,” said Hank C.K. Wuh, Chairman of TruTag. “Dr. Li is widely recognized as an accomplished entrepreneur and exceptional innovator at the leading edge of the pharmaceutical industry. Mr. Leong is a seasoned investor with a proven track record of identifying promising companies and helping them grow into game-changing global industry leaders. Together, their expertise and experience will serve TruTag well as we enter into an exciting phase of the company’s rapid growth and development to impact big drug data and the safety of food and medicine on a global scale.”
The TruTag Board of Directors now consists of Dr. Li; Mr. Leong; Dr. Wuh; Governor George Ariyoshi, the former three-term governor of the State of Hawaii; Jeffery Watanabe, Esq., founder of the Watanabe Ing law firm and director of Hawaiian Electric Industries (NYSE: HE) and Alexander & Baldwin (NYSE: ALEX); Mark Maciejewski, Managing Director of DiNova Venture Partners; and Barry Weinman, co-Founder and Partner Emeritus of Allegis Capital.
About TruTag Technologies
TruTag Technologies is the developer of a leading edible, covert security platform to address the trillion-dollar global illicit product challenge and the $200 billion market for counterfeit drugs. TruTags® are edible, dust-sized particles embedded with spectral data into the very fabric of a product, much like fingerprints on a person, without the need for labels or packaging. TruTag’s covert, low–cost, heat–resistant, and edible silica microtags serve as bar codes and can be incorporated into solid, oral-dose medications as well as other materials and products. The unique physical properties of TruTags® provide a vast library of available unique codes, which allow for tracking of high-volume, high-value items at product or even batch levels. This business information tool can be used in a variety of products, such as pharmaceuticals, nutritional supplements, food, electronics, industrial components, consumer goods, and medical devices.
The TruTag® security platform provides superior brand protection, enhances the safety and traceability of food and medicine, improves tracking and logistics, assures product quality, optimizes efficiency in clinical trial administration, provides informatics for product and component tracking through the supply chain, and enables the Internet of Things. TruTag Technologies, Inc., is a 2014 Technology Pioneer as selected by the World Economic Forum, an honor awarded to the world’s most innovative and influential companies whose technology can significantly impact the way business and society operates. Learn more at www.TruTags.com.
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