Medica highlights successes in half-year results

Brisbane-based Pooled Development Fund Medica Holdings (ASX:MCA) is feeling no pain despite reporting a AUD$2.4 million loss in the six months to December 31 last year.

Medica subsidiary Cytopia expects to begin a Phase I clinical trial of its candidate drug for hormone-refractory prostate cancer and leukaemia, which completed successful trials in animals last year.

Medica MD Kevin Healey said the new drug, which was synthetically 'evolved' from Cytopia's library of kinase-inhibitor molecules, arrests cell division in cancerous cells by disrupting the formation of alpha-tubulin, a key component of the microtubules to which duplicated chromosomes attach prior to cell division. Other tubulin disruptors, like taxol, target beta-tubulin.

By disrupting polymerisatin of beta-tubulin during the early stages of cell division, the Cytopia molecule forces cancerous cell into apoptosis (programmed cell death).

Another Medica subsidiary, Xenome, received a Federal government R&D Start grant to assist in pre-clinical and clinical development of its promising candidate drug for neuropathic pain, Xen2174, a synthetic derivative of a natural paralytic peptide in cone-shell venom.

Medica said the company was on track to lodge an investigational New Drug Application with the US Food and Drug Administration by April this year, and human trials will begin soon after.

Xen2174 is at least 100 times more potent as a painkiller than its natural prototype, according to Xenome. Where other cone-shell toxin analgesics target calcium receptors on nerve cells, Xen2174 disrupts transport of the neurotransmitter nor-epinephrine, which carries pain signals from the peripheral nervous system to the brain.

Healey says Xen2174, when injected into the spinal cord, acts directly upon the central nervous system to inhibit chronic pain caused by nerve inflammation or damage. Tests in animal models also indicate it may be an alternative to morphine and pethidine for preventing labour pain, and post-surgical pain.

Meanwhile, another Medica subsidiary, Alchemia, raised $21 million at IPO, then received a $4.5 million Start grant to scale up manufacture of its synthetic substitute for the natural anti-clotting agent heparin.

Healey said the Alchemia molecule would avoid some of the adverse side-effects associated with heparin, and if successful, could be used both prophylactically and post-surgically to reduce the risk of blood clots associated with knee and hip surgery.

Alchemia also signed a deal with American Pharmaceutical Partners (APP) to commercialise a generic form of the Sanofi anti-clotting drug Arixtra.

Te combination of the Start grant and the APP revenues meant Alchemia would not have to use any of its IPO funds for the scale-up project, Medica said.