Leaner, meaner Amrad refocuses on R&D

Melbourne-based drug discovery company ">Amrad has rationalised its R&D portfolio, the company announced yesterday, with a renewed focus on five projects in the development and pre-clinical stage.

The company also released its half yearly report, announcing $AUD7.4 million in revenues and a 38 per cent reduction in operating costs compared to the same period last year, primarily due to more focused research expenditure and reduction in staff numbers. The company's cash reserves stand at $AUD30.6 million.

The reorganisation comes after a review of the company's pipeline and development of a new portfolio strategy by Foursight Associates consultants Prof Gustav Nossal and Dr Graham Mitchell.

"Amrad will focus on five flagship projects which have the most potential to earn significant early revenues and deliver candidate products into clinical development for serious chronic human diseases," said Amrad's managing director, Dr Sandra Webb. "In addition, a small number of portfolio pipeline projects will continue to support the flagship pipeline."

Webb said this would allow the company to focus both its expertise and its expenditure on projects where it could add the most value.

Existing projects being developed by commercialisation partners and licensees, including the development of Enfilermin for reproductive health applications by pharmaceutical company Serono, would not be affected by the new strategy, Webb said.

The new flagship projects include:

• AM36 for stroke
• GM-CSF receptor antagonists for rheumatoid arthritis
• Non-nucleoside therapy for hepatitis B virus infection
• IL-13 receptor antagonists for asthma, and
• Antagonists of suppressors of cytokine signalling (SOCS) for indications including infectious and autoimmune diseases.

Dr Jonathon Coates, Amrad's chief scientific officer, said that part of the strategy was to move away from neurological and neuropathic areas of product development due to the high cost of development, into areas where Amrad felt that it could add the most value. With that in mind, the company would be looking for potential licensing partners for compounds in its pain programs such as AM336, the conopeptide that successfully completed a Phase I/II clinical trial for chronic pain last year, he said.

Closest to the clinic

The AM36 stroke project is probably the closest to the clinic, said Coates, and the company believes that it can still add quite a bit of value before partnering for further development. The compound has a novel sodium channel blocking and antioxidant activity which appears to provide neuroprotective benefits in stroke models.

"We believe it has a significant advantage over other compounds out there," Coates said.

Both the GM-CSF receptor antagonist project, which is being co-developed with partner Cambridge Antibody Technology, and the IL-13 asthma project are also progressing well, he said.

Coates also noted that the non-nucleoside hepatitis B project was very exciting, and said the company was pushing hard toward pre-clinical development.

At the end of the pipeline is the SOCS project, which Coates described as being very early-stage, but with a strong intellectual property position. "We're looking hard to find antagonists of SOCS," he said.