AMS BioteQ's SeepPlug™ Precision Pore Technology Enters Herbal Medicine Field, Empowering Local Cultivation and Quality Upgrade of Taiwanese Herbal Medicines

TPEx-listed biotech company AMS BioteQ (6864) has officially introduced its core platform technology, SeepPlug™ precision pore cultivation medium, into the application fields of herbal seedlings and field cultivation. On July 20, Mr. Wu-Chang Chuang, General Manager of Soon-Tien-Tang Medicine Factory—the leading brand in scientific Chinese medicine in Taiwan—personally visited AMS BioteQ’s partner farm to discuss technical challenges in local herbal cultivation and potential collaboration, initiating dialogue between two companies from the biomaterials and TCM pharmaceutical sectors.

Four Key Barriers to Localizing Herbal Medicines: Lineage Traceability, Healthy Seedlings, Cultivation Management, and Quality Standards

Taiwan's herbal medicine industry has long faced structural vulnerabilities in its supply chain. It is widely recognized that nearly 90% of herbal materials are imported, making the industry susceptible to price volatility and supply disruptions during geopolitical tensions or pandemics. During the 2003 SARS outbreak, the price of honeysuckle surged ten to twentyfold; from 2020 to 2023, during the Covid-19 pandemic, multiple herbal prices rose 5–10 times, with effects extending into 2025, placing heavy pressure on TCM practitioners. Simultaneously, imported herbs are difficult to fully verify in terms of source transparency, heavy metal and pesticide residues, authenticity of species, and microbial contamination, creating invisible barriers to the modernization of TCM and international export.

Local cultivation is seen as a solution, but it is far more challenging than conventional crop farming. As demonstrated by Soon-Tien-Tang, which took over a decade to successfully cultivate bio-mimetic Dendrobium fimbriatum with stable active ingredients, medicinal plants may lose efficacy if their growing conditions or origins change. The real challenges of localizing herbal medicines encompass four key areas: whether the genetic lineage is accurate, legal, and traceable; whether healthy seedlings can be stably mass-produced; whether quality can be consistently managed from field cultivation to harvest; and whether active ingredients and quality meet domestic and international standards after processing or preparation.

SeepPlug™'s Technical Alignment: Upgrading the Medium into a Quality Management Tool

The core value of AMS BioteQ’s SeepPlug™ lies in transforming the first three of these challenges from “experience-dependent” to “engineered and controllable.” SeepPlug™ is an engineered cultivation medium with traceable raw materials, standardized specifications, and customizable sterilization or purification processes based on application needs. This helps reduce contamination risks at the medium level and supports quality management requirements for source transparency, heavy metals, pesticide residues, and microbial control. Its PoroVance™ pore technology and tunable electrolyte properties allow customized root-zone water, air, and nutrient environments for different medicinal crops, meeting the precise pH and EC requirements of sensitive species like Dendrobium and ginger, thereby supporting stable formation of healthy seedlings. The medium’s standardization and disposable nature also reduce risks of crop rotation disorders and soil-borne diseases such as damping-off, significantly narrowing quality fluctuations from cultivation to harvest.

AMS BioteQ’s current herbal application targets include three categories: Taiwan’s Dendrobium fimbriatum, Bletilla striata, and ginger-family crops. These represent three distinct technical validation pillars for SeepPlug™ in herbal applications: the need for traceable artificial cultivation of endangered regulated herbs, the demand for mass seedling production of high-value herbs, and the requirement for consistent field quality in widely used common herbs.

From Cultivation Medium to Biotech Platform: SeepPlug™ Expands Its Herbal Application Landscape

For AMS BioteQ, entering the herbal medicine field redefines the technological positioning of SeepPlug™. Originally derived from the PoroVance™ precision pore engineering platform used in medical-grade wound dressings, SeepPlug™ is more than just a cultivation substrate—it is a source-level quality management tool that assists TCM manufacturers in lineage management, healthy seedling cultivation, and standardized field practices. It also provides a more consistent raw material base for subsequent harvesting, processing, and quality evaluation. When herbal quality can be engineered and controlled from the source, Taiwan’s TCM industry gains a systemic technological foundation to overcome long-standing structural challenges such as over-reliance on imports, opaque sourcing, and contamination risks from heavy metals and pesticides.

Coinciding with Soon-Tien-Tang Medicine Factory’s 80th anniversary, the company’s long-standing efforts in promoting local herbal cultivation and strengthening the modernization of TCM through scientific validation have set a benchmark for Taiwan’s TCM industry. AMS BioteQ aims to leverage its SeepPlug™ precision pore technology as a collaborative force to support TCM manufacturers in upgrading their localization efforts, jointly advancing Taiwan’s herbal medicines toward a new stage of autonomy, controllability, and traceability.

About AMS BioteQ (TPEx: 6864)

AMS BioteQ is a functional biomaterials platform company. Its core PoroVance™ precision pore engineering technology originates from medical-grade foam dressing technology and spans applications in agricultural cultivation media (SeepPlug™), medical wound dressings (SIPSIP®), and functional skincare (Lumièvre d'Art).