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Singlepoint, Inc. (SING) Set to Capitalize On Fantasy Sports Industry with the Start of the NBA Season

In the past 10 years, the number of people playing fantasy sports has grown from 18 million to a huge 57.4 million. What started as a niche hobby has now become a competitive game allowing fantasy sports to become a multi-billion dollar industry. An article from STATS (http://dtn.fm/Vhf1t) that pulls together data from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA) shows that the number of people playing Fantasy Sports increased by 20% in the U.S. and 18% in Canada between 2014 and 2015.

The fantasy sports industry is one of the fastest growing in the U.S., and, according to the FSTA (http://dtn.fm/jo22O), this industry will continue with its steady growth thanks to mobile devices. IBISWorld (http://dtn.fm/vKQ4q) had this to say: “Over the past 10 years, fantasy sports services have experienced explosive absolute growth of 241.0%. Fantasy sports service firms will continue cashing in on the general move toward more mobile content, which will help bring revenue up at an annualized rate of 7.6% over the five years to 2018.”

But, for organizations such as publicly-traded holding company Singlepoint, Inc. (OTC: SING), with its recent investment in daily fantasy sports company DraftFury, the focus is about more than new mobile devices and potential new games. With the start of the NBA season on October 25, 2016, predictions are out and the population is making its choices for the coming 25-week season. Companies such as DraftFury are on track to offer their customers the best daily fantasy sports experience they can. The company, which offers skill-based daily fantasy contests for the NBA and other sports leagues, was partly acquired by Singlepoint, Inc. in May 2016.

Singlepoint believes this purchase was a great opportunity thanks to DraftFury’s ability to provide a superior gaming experience for users and its unique, seven-level referral program. The company believes this acquisition will not only build shareholder value in the short term but also create exciting new relationships in the long term. Singlepoint, Inc. announced that it is excited to be part of DraftFury’s growth, given the combination of DraftFury’s sophisticated seven-level referral program, which has enabled it to sign up over 1,800 marketing affiliates, and the start of the NBA season.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.Singlepoint.com

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Travel on 195 NextTrips with Monaker Group (MKGI)

A journey of a thousand miles, it has been said, begins with one step. That is as true today as it was 2,600 years ago when the venerable Chinese sage Lao-Tzu, to whom the saying is attributed, lived. Today, however, that thousand mile journey can also start with a single click, along with a little help from Monaker Group, Inc. (OTCQB: MKGI) and its flagship NextTrip platform. From that portal, the spirited adventurer can take his or her next trip to any one of 195 countries around the world.

Starting with that first click, users can begin their physical journey with a visual one on the NextTrip platform. There, the tormented soul driven by wanderlust or the holiday maker just getting away for a week or two will discover the world through a stimulating collection of videos on various destinations and tour packages. The site features videos on leading global cities like Bangkok, Cape Town, Dubai, Istanbul and Vienna, as well as the world’s five “gateway” cities: Hong Kong, London, Paris, New York City and Singapore. Since would-be travelers are increasingly using video content to make decisions about vacations, Monaker has compiled an extensive media library that has since become one of the company’s most valuable digital assets.

Back in October 2015, Monaker acquired the large and very popular global vacation rental platform, AlwaysOnVacation, which had, at that time, a listing of 65,000 properties in 120 countries. Vacation rental, which includes alternative lodging rentals, is one of the fastest growing segments of the travel market. With AlwaysOnVacation, Monaker also acquired relationships with 60 affiliated partner websites that are making its offerings available in 16 languages to around 700,000 subscribers worldwide.

The AlwaysOnVacation properties are part ‘of close to 1.2 million homes’ that Monaker has ‘under contract’, part of its strategy of cultivating ‘significant partnerships for accessing inventory’. As CEO Bill Kerby has pointed out, inventory of that size would make Monaker as big as HomeAway, which was acquired by Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE) in December 2015 for $3.9 billion.

Monaker’s travel assets now include Maupintour, with over 65 years in tour-guided vacations; Voyage.TV, with its thousands of hours of travel footage shot in over 30 countries around the world; AlwayOnVacation, with its 250,000 listed properties; and NextTrip.com.

NextTrip is traveling in areas left uncharted by AirBnB, HomeAway, Priceline (NASDAQ: PCLN) and FlipKey by offering both proprietary and partner-held alternative lodging accommodation. The platform also offers traditional hotel accommodation, timeshare and resort inventory, real-time booking, a bidding platform, video content, car rentals, cruise packages, tours, airline bookings, and access to real live travel agents. It may be time for investors to take that first step and begin the journey with Monaker.

For more information, visit www.MonakerGroup.com

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Moxian, Inc. (MOXC) and Its Magnetic Marketing Mix

Moxian, Inc. (OTCQB: MOXC) is using its new media marketing solution to make a strong play in the Asian marketing industry. Headquartered in Shenzhen, China, the company offers some of the biggest interactive marketing products of the mobile internet era for social and business communities. It provides merchants with tangible opportunities to strengthen their outreach to consumers, and it delivers win-win solutions that allow companies to use big data to gain considerable insight into their operations, as well as their competitors’. With its online-to-offline integrated approach, Moxian infuses major mojo into a company’s marketing plan.

When Moxian Chairman and CEO James Tan was interviewed by Asian Fund Space in May 2016, he spoke about the company’s strategies for success. Even more so, the resulting article (http://dtn.fm/7CmAY) revealed the three things management estimates Moxian needs to do to become a successful internet company. One, Moxian needs to identify a market need and its potential to deliver the products that would be in demand. Two, Moxian needs to emphasize quality over quantity with respect to writing and design code. Three, Moxian needs to develop the ability to design and build the infrastructure that will enable it to deliver products and support services to the market it has identified.

It has been three years now since Moxian was founded and the company is still very much technology driven. About half of Moxian’s staff of 170 (approximately 80 people) are focused on research and development (R&D). And, out of these 80 staffers, about 20 focus on end-product development while the remaining 60 are general R&D staffers.

Since its founding in 2013, Moxian has maintained an active product release and operations schedule. In October 2013, it launched its Moxian App 1.0 for beta in China and Malaysia. The following spring, it set up sales and marketing departments in Malaysia and Mainland China, and, shortly after, registered 50,000 merchants and 300,000 global users for its app. By September 2014, it had kicked off development of its Moxian+ platform, and, in the summer of 2015, it opened a new office in Shenzhen and also co-hosted and sponsored the Xinhua New Media Integrated Conference (Moxian’s deal with Xinhua, in particular, marked a major milestone in its development). Finally, later that October, the company completed the launch of its Moxian+ User App and Moxian+ Business App.

Over the years, the thriving new media market has given rise to a fast-growing net advertising sector in China and the rest of the world. In China alone, the advertising market is expected to hit around $80 billion in 2016. With about half of this number coming from mobile ad revenue, Moxian’s management sees this development as welcome news as the company has been preparing to tap into this booming market for quite some time now.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.Moxian.com

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eXp World Holdings (EXPI) Brokerage Division Continues Accelerated Growth, Tops 1,900 Agents

Continuing its already significant growth rate, eXp Realty, the real estate brokerage division of eXp World Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB: EXPI), has expanded its agent base to more than 1,900 professionals, reporting a 151% increase in agent count, as compared to the third quarter of 2015. If it continues to expand at the same rate, it is very likely that the Agent-Owned Cloud Brokerage® will hit the 2,200-agent mark by the end of the year.

The company has been experiencing accelerated growth since the beginning of the year, expanding both its agent base and its coverage. With only 864 agents on January 1, it reached 1,500 agents in early August and now has 1,900 professionals across 41 markets in the U.S. and Canada – more specifically covering 41 states, the District of Columbia and Alberta, Canada. According to a company press release, the brokerage had 1,816 real estate professionals at the end of the third quarter, compared to 721 agents at the end of Q3 2015, marking an increase of over 151%. Earlier this month, it added its 1,900th agent.

This exponential growth rate is the direct results of eXp Realty’s unique business model. Unlike most competitors that concentrate their activity around a brick and mortar office, eXp’s commercial and residential brokerage relies heavily on cloud-based technologies and an advanced virtual reality platform to build an online community of real estate professionals. The platform allows for a wide range of operations, including agent training, lead generation, IT services, leadership meetings and more. Agents can meet in this virtual reality space to share experiences, exchange ideas with other agents, take online real estate classes and even play a game of virtual soccer.

In addition, the eXp Realty model is based on the idea that all agents should also have the possibility of being owners, so the brokerage offers its members access to lucrative revenue sharing programs and the opportunity to become shareholders based on their contributions to company growth. Since everything is done online, from the comfort of one’s home, agents can provide more efficient service and increase their profit with a lower risk, without having to worry about franchise and desk fees or similar expenses.

This system has allowed for a massive increase in the number of agents, but also for record revenue for eXp World Holdings in the first two quarters of the year, including more than $7 million in the first quarter and $13 million in the second. The financial figures for Q3 have not yet been released. According to eXp Realty CEO Jason Gesing, this growth rate shows that the company has become the brokerage of choice for agents and teams, as well as for brokerage owners that want to increase their profit. He also said his company was very happy with the quality of the real estate professionals who are joining the organization.

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.eXpWorldHoldings.com

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Sports Field Holdings, Inc. (SFHI) Taking Aim at Potentially Dangerous Athletic Surfaces with PrimePlay™ Turf Systems

Sports Field Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB: SFHI), through wholly-owned subsidiary FirstForm, Inc., is a product development company focused primarily on the design and construction of athletic facilities and the commercialization of its proprietary PrimePlay™ synthetic turf products within the sports industry. The FirstForm brand, which was originally announced in April of this year, highlights SFHI’s position at the forefront of the U.S. turf industry, which is bolstered by the company’s unwavering commitment to putting the safety and experiences of athletes first, through both product and facility innovation. To date, this commitment to excellence has played a key role in SFHI’s success in securing a number of high-profile jobs across the country, including playing surfaces at the ESPN Sport Science Lab in Burbank, California, and the renowned IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida.

“Our new brand communicates to both current customers and potential customers that we continue to put our customer FIRST as we help them to FORM their vision into reality,” Jeromy Olson, chief executive officer of SFHI, stated in a news release earlier this year. “We look forward to providing continued excellence in our products and the delivery of world-class athletic facilities to the entire community of sport across the nation.”

Just before unveiling its rebranding efforts, SFHI announced that it was awarded its largest purchase order in company history for the creation or replacement of eight athletic fields owned by Richland County School District One in Columbia, South Carolina. The company beat out five major competitors to land the $5.8 million purchase order, and it’s successfully capitalized on the momentum provided by this contract in recent months.

In August, SFHI’s new PrimePlay™ turf systems were highlighted as a favorable alternative to potentially dangerous crumb rubber turf fields by the National Council of Youth Sports (NCYS), which represents over 200 member organizations serving more than 60 million registered youth athletes. FirstForm, Inc. was also approved by the NCYS as a ‘Recommended Provider’ of the replicated grass systems. In a recent news release, Olson took the opportunity to point out the important differences between existing crumb rubber turf products and SFHI’s PrimePlay™ alternatives.

“Existing crumb rubber turf products on the market are known to contain carcinogens, and their safety has been challenged by numerous national agencies,” he noted. “FirstForm’s infill products are all natural and organic and do not shift during play. We believe they are better and safer than anything else out there and can be tailored to nearly every sport.”

Leveraging this versatility, the company has also made moves to capitalize on new and emerging market opportunities by targeting the fast-growing indoor soccer and lacrosse facilities markets. This strategy appears to be sound, particularly when studying the current sports landscape across the country. According to data from IBISWorld, the indoor sports facilities market is valued at more than $900 million, and no companies currently have a dominant share of the niche. In order to better position itself within this market, SFHI has enlisted recognizable brand ambassadors from across the sporting community, including future NFL Hall of Famer Ray Lewis and former MLB pitcher Rick Honeycutt.

With a proven track record across multiple sports on both indoor and outdoor projects, SFHI’s potential for growth in the coming years is immense, and demand for sports turf appears to be on course to support this performance. According to a 2015 report by research firm ReportsnReports.com (http://dtn.fm/4QUwK), rising demand for quality playing surfaces is expected to spur a compound annual growth rate of 12 percent for the global artificial grass turf market from 2015 to 2019. With ongoing investigations into the safety of existing crumb rubber turf products, this forecast positions SFHI to greatly expand its market share moving forward.

“The safety and risks associated with crumb rubber remain an unknown to athletes, parents, and athletic facilities nationally, and we at Sports Field support the government’s investigation into their long-term health impacts,” concluded Olson. “We are pleased to be installing our unique alternatives with PrimePlay™. Our rubberless Replicated Grass™ and similar sport-specific turf products offer a compelling, crumb rubber-free solution in the industry.”

For more information, visit http://ir.firstform.com

Medical Transcription Billing, Corp. (MTBC) (MTBCP) is Proving to be a HIT in Healthcare Information Technology

Medical practice has come a long way since the time when barber surgeons doctored to the masses. Physicians, in those early times, mostly attended to the wealthy. The ordinary man would have his blood let by the same tradesman who cut his hair. And although they had to earn a daily bread, no physician, presumably, took up the vocation because he considered it a business. Business enterprise was deemed vulgar and beneath one who took the Hippocratic Oath.

Today that stigma no longer stains commercial endeavor. The good medical practitioner can be a good businessperson as well. In fact, the modern Doctor of Medicine (MD), Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO), Nurse Practitioner (NP) or Licensed Midwife (LM) must be. And the suite of Electronic Health Record (EHR), revenue cycle, transcription and data management applications from Medical Transcription Billing, Corp. (NASDAQ: MTBC) (NASDAQ: MTBCP) is helping those professionals be just that. In the healthcare information technology (HIT) market, the cloud-based business administration solutions from MTBC are proving to be quite a hit.

The healthcare landscape is rapidly changing. As in other industries, information technology is altering methodologies and holding out the promise to improve the quality of services while keeping costs down. The industry is under a mandate to move from a fee-for-service approach to a value-based reimbursement one. Under fee-for-service, providers are paid on volume: number of visits, number of tests, etc. With value-based reimbursement, other more sophisticated quality control metrics will be used.

To manage the data generated by these new performance measures requires wholesale adoption of new information technologies. In addition, there is an imperative for providers to move to electronic health record (EHR) systems. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, provides incentives and penalties to physicians and others to adopt EHRs. These two developments have given rise to a virtually new field of healthcare information technology.

The chief financial officer of MTBC, Bill Korn, discussed the implications of these forces for the company with The Wall Street Transcript (TWST) (http://dtn.fm/u096T) and the opportunities lying ahead. Korn, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School, has been with Medical Transcription Billing since June 2013. He was a co-founder of the IBM Consulting Group, now IBM Global Services, the creation of which marked IBM’s highly successful transition from hardware to services. Korn has been CFO of six other growing technology businesses.

He described MTBC’s business:

“MTBC is a health care IT company. Our clients are doctors’ practices. We typically work with smaller practices, meaning one- to 10-doctor practices, and we provide them with a variety of services. We do their billing, submitting all the claims to insurance, preparing and mailing statements to their patients, and giving them electronic health record software that allows them to record notes of the visit. We provide practice management software for the front office staff to schedule appointments, check insurance eligibility, send out automated reminder calls and text messages about flu shots, etc.”

In addition to these services, practitioners and patients have access to a suite of mobile applications, including apps that the doctors can use to refill prescriptions, apps that the patients can use to look up their records, set up appointments, request prescription refills and check in when they arrive at the practice. Doctors who do not want to type their notes into the EHR can dictate into an app on their iPhone or Android, which will be sent automatically to MTBC personnel, who will listen to it and type the notes into the electronic health record software.

MTBC’s main competitive advantage is its ability and track record to deliver these services effectively and at a cost far less than any competitor. Part of the reason for this, Korn pointed out, is that the company has bought or established a number of overseas subsidiaries, sourcing expertise and talent for much less than is obtainable in the U.S. MTBC’s two largest offices are in Pakistan ‘where we employ 1,500 people at salaries of approximately one-tenth what you would pay in the United States for similarly skilled and educated labor.’

MTBC had 2015 revenues of $23.1 million, an increase of 26 percent over 2014. Now Korn wants to make a quantum leap to $230 million. Can MTBC pull it off?

According to a MarketsandMarkets report (http://dtn.fm/XoA2B), the global healthcare IT market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.4 percent over the next five years, from $117.7 billion in 2015 to $228.8 billion in 2020. Getting just 0.1 percent of that pie five years down the road would certainly do it.

For more information, visit www.mtbc.com, and see the company’s fact sheet at http://ir.mtbc.com/events.cfm.

eXp World Holdings, Inc. (EXPI) Announces Addition of Darren James Real Estate Team to eXp Realty

Earlier today, eXp World Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB: EXPI), through eXp Realty, announced the latest addition to its Agent-Owned Cloud Brokerage® – Darren James of Darren James Real Estate Experts in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In his 15 years operating in the real estate industry, James has earned a number of noteworthy honors, including being named the number one REALTOR® in the Gulf States region for total individual production in both 2014 and 2015. His brokerage has recorded similar success, with the Darren James Real Estate Experts team having been ranked just outside the top 50 in terms of transactions by the Wall Street Journal in 2015.

“The eXp Realty business model is more progressive and agent-centric than any I’ve seen in my 15 years in this business,” James noted in this morning’s news release. “This is a tremendous opportunity, not just for me and for my family, but for all of the agents who have been great and loyal contributors to my success.”

James will be officially introduced to the eXp Realty community during this week’s leadership meeting, which can be viewed on the company’s YouTube channel (http://dtn.fm/mg5PA) on Friday at 11:00 am ET.

eXp Realty has been in a period of rapid growth for much of 2016, and it continues to attract leading real estate professionals from across North America with its aggressive revenue sharing program and collaborative, cloud-based resources. Earlier this month, the company announced that its family of agents and brokers had grown to include more than 1,900 members across 41 markets in the United States and Canada, representing an increase of roughly 120 percent from the beginning of this year. EXPI aims to build on this growth throughout the balance of 2016, expanding beyond 2,200 agents by year end.

“Increasingly, eXp Realty is the destination for top producing teams and for brokerage owners looking to increase profitability, achieve scalable growth across markets, and deliver the opportunity of ownership to their valued agents and team members,” Jason Gesing, chief executive officer of eXp Realty, stated in this morning’s news release. “As a company, we are committed to offering a value proposition that is so strong that it would be professionally irresponsible for an agent to affiliate with any other brokerage.”

The announcement that Darren James and his real estate team have joined the Agent-Owned Cloud Brokerage® comes on the heels of two similar announcements over the past two weeks. On October 14, the company announced the addition of Miguel Herrera, the top international luxury agent in all of South Texas, to the eXp team. EXPI followed up on this announcement on October 17 when Sacramento’s Brent Gove team, one of the top real estate teams in California, joined the growing brokerage company. The opportunity for agents and brokers to become owners through eXp Realty’s innovative business model is proving enticing for top real estate professionals from a number of markets.

“The eXp Realty business model is the strongest in the industry,” Herrera noted in a recent news release. “This is the future of real estate and I want to be a part of it.”

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.eXpWorldHoldings.com

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OurPet’s Company (OPCO) Achieves Record Results for Third Quarter 2016

Before the opening bell, OurPet’s Company (OTCQX: OPCO) reported record revenue of $7.26 million for the fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2016, marking a year-over-year increase of 21 percent. The company’s net income for the three-month period of $495,669, or $0.025 per share, was also up 21 percent from the previous year. All told, when discounting the effects of a one-time U.S. Custom exam refund of $94,000 that was received during the third quarter of 2015, OPCO’s adjusted net income grew by a staggering 57 percent between the third quarters of 2015 and 2016. Dr. Steven Tsengas, president and chief executive officer of OurPet’s Company, reiterated the strong results in this morning’s update.

“With the resumption of shipments to our major specialty pet retail customer, we were firing on all cylinders this past quarter,” he stated. “With the strong third-quarter sales, we are up almost 10% for the nine months of 2016, more than double the pet industry average.”

To view OurPet’s Company’s full third quarter results, visit http://dtn.fm/WxAE3

Over the years, OurPet’s Company has established a position in the growing global pet products industry through a commitment to quality and innovation, and this dedication played a key role in the company’s third quarter growth. Leveraging a sizable intellectual property portfolio that includes more than 170 patents in either issued or pending status, OPCO recently commenced initial shipments of both its environmentally-friendly Switchgrass Natural Cat Litter™ with BioChar (http://dtn.fm/SeMk8) and its technology-powered Intelligent Pet Care™ product line (http://dtn.fm/jPs9U). Based upon the early market acceptance of these innovations and initial sales bookings for the month of October, OPCO’s management team is currently “guardedly optimistic” about the company’s prospects for sustained growth in the fourth quarter of 2016 and beyond.

“Beyond 2016, our strategy is to achieve double-digit growth in sales and net income with an emphasis on developing and launching proprietary, innovative products and entering appropriate new market segments,” continued Tsengas.

Central to these development efforts is a newly-announced partnership with Paulee Cleantec Ltd., an international leader in eco-friendly solutions for the management of human and animal waste. Through this partnership, the two companies will seek to jointly develop and commercialize a portable solution to the growing environmental concerns associated with improperly managed pet waste. Paulee Cleantec has already developed a powerful proof-of-concept waste system that uses an exothermic oxidation process to “convert animal feces into an odor-free ash fertilizer in less than a minute.”

“In addition, we recently completed contracts with a leading direct TV (DRTV) marketing company to test market several of our new electronic interactive cat toys for a possible DRTV campaign to launch sometime in the second quarter of 2017,” added Tsengas. “We have many ‘irons in the fire’ and are very excited about the future.”

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.OurPets.com

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Medical Transcription Billing (MTBC) Expects Significant Revenue Growth after MediGain Acquisition, Expands Team

Leading healthcare information technology provider Medical Transcription Billing, Corp. (NASDAQ: MTBC; MTBCP) this month completed its acquisition of medical billing company MediGain in a move widely expected to significantly boost its overall revenue in 2017 and offer improved services to its now enhanced customer base. According to Medical Transcription Billing Chief Financial Officer Bill Korn, the $7 million acquisition of Texas-based MediGain, LLC and its New Jersey subsidiary Millennium Practice Management, LLC, is the largest acquisition in the history of his company.

Medical Transcription Billing has made an initial payment of $2 million for the MediGain assets and will pay an additional $5 million in early 2017. This is a significant discount compared to the industry norm of greater than one times revenue, Korn explained. For organic growth, one of the largest IT companies in the healthcare industry, athenahealth (NASDAQ: ATHN), spent roughly $230 million on sales and marketing last year, with a revenue growth of $172 million, so MTBC paid less than others might spend to grow the business organically.

The deal marks a major corporate milestone for MTBC and shows the power of its acquisition-based growth strategy, Korn said. He added that the revenue cycle management customer accounts and other assets acquired from MediGain have annual revenues of more than $10 million, which is expected to contribute significantly to Medical Transcription Billing’s revenue growth in 2017. In turn, the company expects to greatly improve its operations and services as a direct result of this revenue growth, which will most likely push MTBC further up the list of top providers of technological solutions to the healthcare industry, alongside companies such as athenahealth. In addition, the profits resulting from the MediGain acquisition are expected to exceed the company’s capital costs, so the transaction should be accretive to the shareholders next year.

Another direct result of the MediGain acquisition is the expansion of Medical Transcription Billing’s team. The acquisition enabled the company to add many new members to its North America team and expand its team in Asia to additional countries such as India and Sri Lanka, where there is a highly-qualified and cost effective medical billing workforce. In Sri Lanka, for instance, MTBC now has the largest team of healthcare technology professionals in the country. Also part of the acquisition, MediGain’s former chief operating officer, Gary Smith, will now lead MediGain Practice Management.

As it integrates MediGain and the new revenue cycle management customer accounts, Medical Transcription Billing will continue to leverage its proprietary technology and global team of professionals to improve operations and provide world-class service to all its clients. The company is already serving a wide range of healthcare entities and customers, from individual physicians to medium size medical practices, and has partnered with various healthcare organizations to expand its reach nationwide and globally.

For the Seeking Alpha article on MTBC’s Acquisition of MediGain, visit http://dtn.fm/Nb3Uj, and see http://dtn.fm/b3BMx for additional articles relating to MTBC.

For more information, visit www.MTBC.com

ContraVir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (CTRV) Set to Shake Up HBV Therapy Market with Combination Therapy Based on CMX157 & CRV431

A constant theme that comes up in and often dominates the leading edge of the biopharma sector is the building of better mousetraps. This is certainly the case for New Jersey-based biopharma developer ContraVir Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: CTRV), whose phase 2a clinical antiviral candidate CMX157 (http://dtn.fm/sQXh9) is knocking loudly on the door of Gilead Sciences’ (NASDAQ: GILD) Viread® (TDF, or tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) in chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV).

Coming out of the box strong after notably successful phase 1 safety and efficacy trials, ContraVir was quite proud to recently announce (http://dtn.fm/8NxXL) that the ongoing head-to-head phase 2a (multiple ascending dose) clinical study of its highly potent prodrug of tenofovir (TFV), CMX157, is showing serious potential versus Viread. With data points like a 99 percent reduction in viral load (http://dtn.fm/vtJ59) among patients orally dosed with 25 mg of CMX157, compared to a 300 mg TDF dose, the company is obviously excited about CMX157’s ability to deliver significant viral load reduction safely, at a much lower dose. Delimiting systemic/liver toxicity issues has long been the industry brass ring, and it now looks like that goal is considerably within CTRV’s striking distance.

ContraVir sees CMX157 as the backbone of a rapidly emerging combination therapy approach to HBV, where the liver-targeting capabilities of its prodrug candidate help to reduce impact to other tissue systems. There are a list of significant potential advantages for CMX157 over something like Viread at the point of sale, and ContraVir is bucking hard to not only cure HBV, but slice off an ever larger piece of the global HBV therapeutics market, a market that is on track to do a modest 2.4% CAGR through 2024, when it will reach upwards of $3 billion (http://dtn.fm/Y6Qux). The enhanced bioavailability of CMX157’s novel structure compared to existing indications (which also helps deal with liver damage by reducing the indication’s overall circulatory footprint), is now starting to really come to light through the latest clinical results.

Early on, when the company began touting CMX157’s ability to exploit natural lipid uptake mechanisms, and how this candidate showed in vitro HBV aggression 97 times greater than TFV during its phase 1 days, investors should’ve been paying closer attention. The data from this latest clinical work is consistent with extant data stretching back to preclinical work on CMX157, and with around 786,000 people dying worldwide each year (http://dtn.fm/0dQoF) (mostly due to HBV-related liver disease like cirrhosis and liver cancer) from HBV, ContraVir’s work has become a hot topic. CMX157 has previously been found to be well tolerated at dosages up to 100 mg, so the fact that this stuff is basically doing Viread numbers at 25 mg already spells big things for the ongoing dose escalation work being conducted by CTRV.

CMX157 is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg that is ContraVir’s growing pipeline of candidates, a pipeline which includes an impressive next-gen cyclophilin inhibitor with enhanced potency and selectivity, known as CRV431 (http://dtn.fm/5pmBl). With IND-enabling study work in the offing and a target sometime next year for CRV431 clinical trials, CTRV is really shaping up to be one of the leading alternative HBV therapy developers. CRV431’s ability to attack the life cycle of HBV at numerous points along the arc is a key advantage, and that combination therapy strategy the company keeps pushing really starts to make sense when you take a closer look at the potential advantages of CRV431.

These advantages include a sharp reduction in HBV DNA (in vivo), without toxicity, meaning that liver fibrosis can be hugely downgraded as a complication. Pair that up with a demonstrated ability to actually block entry for HBV into liver cells, and it is little wonder that ContraVir is looking to the horizon for a combination approach with CMX157 as the situation commander, and ancillary indications like best-in-class potency CRV431 on street-sweeper detail. Talk about laying down cover fire: CRV431 is anticipated to be effective against all HBV genotypes, offers broad-spectrum blockage of a large portion of specific HBV protein interaction with host cell cyclophilins, and provides a clearly complementary method of action for CMX157.

In short, the company has both the vision and the technology to deliver on a promise to HBV patients that first became apparent with the emergence of what is now basically a lifetime cure for hepatitis C. The HBV field has been driving hard toward this goal, inspired by what has been done in hepatitis C, and it now appears that New Jersey’s own CTRV could be the one to run this ball into the end zone. Moreover, it was very encouraging to investors to see how the New Jersey Economic Development Authority’s highly competitive Technology Business Tax Certificate Transfer Program (which allows New Jersey-based companies to sell R&D tax credits or net operating losses for up to 80 percent of value), provided $1.8 million in non-dilutive funding (http://dtn.fm/ZiI0h) for CTRV, which has been instrumental for this homegrown biopharma success story to put the pedal to the metal on its HBV pipeline.

Hepatitis B is most prevalent in the regions of sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia, where as much as 10 percent of the population in certain areas is chronically infected. Globally, the number of infected ranges upwards of the CDC/WHO official figure of 240 million, and with as many as 2.2 million chronic hepatitis B cases in the U.S. alone, CTRV’s technology could mean that the company is sitting on a potential goldmine, a goldmine that could provide a beacon of hope for millions.

The broader therapeutics market for liver diseases was around $7.5 billion in 2014, and a recent report published by Grand View Research sees the antiviral segment as the most promising, with 8.9 percent growth anticipated through 2022 (http://dtn.fm/sLM3O). The overall liver disease therapy market is on track to surpass $12 billion during that same interval, with the Asia Pacific region expected to do a CAGR similar to the antiviral segment, running around 8.8 percent. There is a huge external market for CTRV, and the possibilities of pipeline commercialization are indeed tantalizing.

Many investors are already talking about how instrumental the addition of biotech veteran Thomas H. Adams, Ph.D., to the CTRV Board back in September has been with regard to all of this, by the way. After all, this is the guy who founded antisense biotech innovator Genta, as well as Gen-Probe, which was acquired by the same Chugai Pharmaceutical (http://dtn.fm/50p7O) that later ended up in a strategic alliance with biopharma juggernaut Roche (OTC: RHHBY). Even without addressing the company’s pivotal phase 3 trial of its FV-100 indication, engineered to reduce incident rates and severity of shingles (herpes zoster), as well as the severe post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN) pain associated with shingles – CTRV is the kind of near-commercialization contender that many biopharma investors dream of.

The market for FV-100 shows a lot of upside potential, in particular, due to a rapidly accumulating adult population across developed countries. In the U.S., the number of persons 65 years and older is projected to go from just 14.5 percent of the overall population two years ago, to 21.7 percent or more of total population by 2040 (http://dtn.fm/S874v). FV-100 has demonstrated safety and efficacy with clinically meaningful reduction in PHN rates versus GlaxoSmithKline’s (NYSE: GSK) Valtrex® (valacyclovir).

With as much as 10 percent fewer of 350 patients treated with FV-100 requiring some form of narcotics for pain control, this fast-acting, low-dose, once-daily, oral antiviral could really become one of CTRV’s money makers. PHN is the most common/clinically relevant complication with shingles, and FV-100’s pivotal phase 3 trial could spell much needed relief, especially for elderly patients who already have trouble sleeping, or who suffer from other quality of life-diminishing problems associated with shingles.

There is a lot to like about ContraVir, take a closer look by visiting www.Contravir.com

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