BioDiem lists on ASX after successful IPO

Melbourne pharmaceutical company BioDiem has listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX:BDM), cashed up with AUD$12 million to fund its research and development program.

Despite being conducted over the Christmas period, BioDiem's initial public offering, sponsored by eG Capital and EL&C Baillieu Stockbroking, raised $8.5 million at $1.25 per share, which values the company at $39 million.

BioDiem shares were trading at $1.05 at time of writing, after a high of $1.10.

BioDiem's launch comes at a propitious time for its drive to capitalise on its Russian-tech connection with the St Petersburg Institute of Experimental Medicine.

Asian poultry farms are being ravaged by a lethal epidemic avian influenza that threatens to spill into human population, causing a lethal pandemic. There is no vaccine, and the virulent new H5N1 influenza serotype is proving too hot for conventional vaccine-production systems.

H5N1-serotype influenza viruses are equally lethal to chick embryos, making it difficult to develop attenuated 'seed' strains by passaging the virus in embryonated chick eggs -- the standard method of vaccine development for the past 80 years.

One of BioDiem's lead products, FluVacc, is a safe, non-virulent 'plug-and-play' virus that can be programmed to express immunising coat-antigen genes from any wild-type influenza virus. BioDiem has secured a licence from international pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co to mass-produce its flu vaccines in mammalian cell culture.

St Petersburg Institute researchers modified the genes for the virus's internal proteins to remove its pathogenicity. The changes also shift the optimal temperature for the virus' replication down into the mid-20s - so far, the vaccine strain cannot replicate at temperatures of below the normal human body temperature of 38 degrees.

Most other influenza vaccines employ attenuated virus strains with unmodified core-protein genes, which can pose a potential risk to immunodeficient AIDS, cancer or transplant patients.

BioDiem has already conducted a successful Phase I clinical trial of FluVacc, which is administered intranasally.

The company's co-founder and director of R&D, Emeritus Prof Bob Borland, of RMIT University, said officials at the US Centres for Disease Control had discussed the FluVacc technology with the company's Russian collaborators.

"Our aim is to get a major pharmaceutical company to run with it," Borland said. "[US vaccine company] MedImmune is in talks with the FDA on its FluMist vaccine, which could help clear a path for us."

BioDiem CEO Tom Williams said the company was moving to commercialise its other lead compound, BDME, for treating eye disease.

BioDiem announced just before Christmas that Sydney University's Save Sight Institute would test BDME's potential as a treatment for macular degeneration (loss of vision due to the death of light-sensing cells near the centre of the retina) and diabetic retinopathy (overgrowth of the retina by blood vessels in patients with diabetes).