CogState ponders market options

Unlisted Melbourne company CogState is contemplating a float on the Australian Stock Exchange, according to CEO Dr Peter Bick.

"I think the window is opening, and is open for the right company," Bick told Australian Biotechnology News. But the GBS Venture Partners-backed company has yet to decide whether to access the ASX through an IPO, or back-door list via a reverse merger, and according to Bick, is shopping around for an underwriter.

CogState has two distinct areas of development: its test for cognitive impairment, and development of drugs for a variety of neurological conditions.

The company's computer-based test for cognitive impairment has a variety of uses, from monitoring concussive injuries in professional sports to measuring memory decline over time in patients showing signs of early Alzheimer's disease. Unlike traditional tests of memory and cognitive impairment, CogState's test can be used to show progressive declines in memory over time.

In a study to be published soon in the journal Neurology by CogState researchers, a group of 250 healthy over 60-year-olds with no known risk factors was tested four times over the course of one year with CogState's test. A distinct subset, comprising around 13 per cent of the cohort, was identified within 9 to 12 months as developing a distinct memory deficit. Traditional tests of memory, however, took six years to identify the same subset.

But the CogState test's use as a predictor for the onset of Alzheimer's disease is not its only use. The company has been selling the test to drug companies, including Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, for use in the clinical development of a variety of drugs, from therapeutics for mild cognitive impairment, HIV dementia and the cognitive effects of coronary heart surgery, to drugs with cognitive side effects like anti-histamines.

"One company has said it will be using the test for every Phase I [clinical] trial going forward," said Bick.

On the clinical drug development side of things, the company has been busy in-licensing a variety of potential therapeutics for further development, Bick said, including angiotensin-4 receptor agonists licensed from a Japanese company which may be used to enhance memory and learning, and a series of compounds which act on glutamate transporters in the brain.

Ironically, the latter compounds were developed by Prof Phil Beart at Monash University, but came to CogState via US company Transgenomic, which bought the original license-holder for the compounds, Annovis. Both projects are in validation and lead optimisation stages of pre-clinical development.

A bit further along is a potential Parkinson's drug licensed in from the Bar-Ilan University in Israel. The drug delivers dopamine precursor tyrosine via a carrier fatty acid that transports the amino acid through the blood-brain barrier, and has already been tested in a small human study. According to Bick, the drug is unlikely to be toxic and the company plans to continue with pre-clinical development, in addition to holding a physician-sponsored clinical trial in the US.