Celentis swims as PPL sinks

The collapse of Scottish biotech PPL Therapeutics, of 'Dolly' fame, will force the company to sell off its New Zealand 'biopharm' at south Waikato and its 3000 transgenic sheep.

PPL also has a joint project with New Zealand biotech Celentis, to produce protein pharmaceuticals in transgenic cows developed by scientists at the Crown Research Institute AgResearch.

Spiralling losses forced PPL to suspend its sheep research project, which involved expressing therapeutic proteins in the milk of transgenic sheep, earlier this year.

In a partnership with international pharmaceutical company Bayer, PPL has been exporting milk from the Waikato flock to Europe for processing to extract an experimental protein therapeutic for cystic fibrosis.

PPL also cloned the first pigs capable of providing organs for humans, and was working on stem cells as a potential source of new organs.

Business analysts in the UK said PPL's failure was due to poor management, not poor science.

After PPL suffered a net loss of AUD$30.82 million in the six months to June this year, and investors rejected its restructuring plans last week, its board announced plans to sell off the entire company, including the Waikato 'pharm' and its transgenic sheep. If there are no buyers, the business will be broken up and sold separately.

Celentis CEO Dr Stewart Washer said PPL's demise would not prevent the dairy-cattle pharming project from moving ahead.

The company is developing transgenic dairy cows to secrete novel and out-of-patent therapeutic proteins in their milk.

Washer said Celentis was talking with several potential international partners in the project. "PPL has core licences on the technolgy, but we have alternative routes and freedom to operate," he said.

"We're the only organisation that has received approval from the Environmental Risk Management Authority to receive broad approval to produce proteins in transgenic cows.

"We can go from gene to milk with the protein, but then we need a purification partner. PPL was going to do that, but we're already talking to one in the US. From there, we'll go to a generic pharmaceutical company to formulate, package and market the product."

Washer said that because Celentis was working on the high-volume dairy cattle protein-expression system, it had no interest in sheep, and was not interested in the transgenic sheep on the Waikato farm.

However, he said Celentis might be interested in the farm itself, in lush country near Taupo, because it is zoned to run transgenic animals -- including cattle.