Formerly doing business as Panax Pharmaceutical Company Ltd, InKine Pharmaceutical Company Inc. began operations as an ethnobiologics firm organzied around development of drugs from traditional medicinal plants. After going public in 1995, the firm went through series of mergers and acqusitions to broaden the base of the firm's business operations and completed a series of post-IPO fund raising efforts before being itself acquired in 2005. Over the period the firm had shifted focus to diagnosis and treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. In Summer 2005, creating one of the largest US companies focused exclusively on gastroenterology, Salix Pharmaceuticals - itself an SBIR involved firm - acquired InKine Pharmaceutical in a tax-free stock swap.