Solbec plans psoriasis treatment trial

Perth drug discovery company Solbec Pharmaceuticals (ASX:SBP) has set out plans to trial its promising anti-cancer compound SBP002 as a treatment for the chronic skin disorder psoriasis this year.

Solbec will trial a topical formulation of SBP002 in volunteers with psoriasis, after several AIDS and cancer patients experimentally treated with the drug as a last-resort therapy experienced rapid and complete relief from their chronic psoriasis.

Solbec CEO Stephen Carter said that the patients, whose psoriasis had proved refractory to all commercially available treatments, regrew healthy pink skin within 30 days.

Carter said SBP002 appeared to be systemically active against psoriasis -- topically applied to skin on the calf of one patient, it cleared up psoriasis on the ankle and foot.

"I have a letter from the wife of one of the patients we treated, who said that for the first time in their 30 years of marriage, she no longer had to vacuum their sheets to remove dead skin, or wash them to remove bloodstains from her husband's bleeding skin," Carter said. "For the first time, they were able to take their grandchildren swimming at the beach."

Solbec's board has approved AUD$1.7 million for the preliminary study, and Carter said that if it confirmed the incidental findings, his company would have several potential development partners to bring the new treatment to market.

Carter said the company was currently developing the protocols for the trial, which will be conducted at several Australian centres.

SBP002 is a combination of two alkaloids from the sap of a common Australian roadside weed, devil's apple (Solanum linnaeum), a member of the potato-tomato family, which is renowned as a source of therapeutic drugs.

A number of palliative-care cancer patients with malignant melanoma and mesothelioma lung cancer who enrolled in a trial under the provisions of the Therapeutic Goods Administration's Special Access Scheme, experienced dramatic resolution of their cancers, variously causing their tumour growth to slow, half or shrink -- or in several cases, to disappear completely. Patients also reported increased well-being, and recovery from cachexia -- the rapid wasting typical of end-stage cancer.

The company announced last September it had begun a Phase I trial to evaluate SBP002's safety and tolerability in patients with advanced solid tumours.

SBP002 appears to act as an immune-system modulator, by inhibiting interleukin-6, a cytokine involved in cancer-cell proliferation, as well as in a range of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, including psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis.

Solbec said there were at least a million psoriasis sufferers in Australia, and the US market for psoriasis therapies was worth between $2.5 billion and $6 billion a year.