Universities combine forces to form new meditech

In a rare example of cross-pollination, the University of Sydney and the University of Western Sydney have pooled the IP from three advanced research projects on inflammation and cancer, and spun out a new biomedical company, Medical Therapies.

The company is already planning an IPO later this year to raise between AUD$8 million and $13 million to take three developmental drugs into clinical trials.

Medical Therapies' managing director, Llewellyn Casbolt said the company had interest from at least one big pharma, excited at the prospect of an early partnering deal for a novel drug-targeting technology that rivals the precision of monoclonal antibodies.

Casbolt said the technology, jointly developed by the two universities, will allow researchers to design molecules to target unique peptide sequences in cell-surface proteins. He describes it as being at an earlier developmental stage than the company's other projects, and still somewhat blue-sky.

\However, laboratory experiments have confirmed that it can be used to 'address' cytotoxic or antibiotic compounds to selected protein targets on cancerous or infected cells, or bacteria and viruses, with similar precision to monoclonal antibodies, but fewer side-effects.

From the University of Sydney has the company acquired the IP for new and potentially safer variants of the anti-inflammatory drug indomethacin.

Pre-clinical tests in animals indicate that copper- and zinc-stabilised forms of indomethacin, developed by Prof Peter Lay at the University of Sydney, have potent anti-inflammatory activity, but virtually eliminate the risk of gastric bleeding associated with chronic, high-dose use of indomethacin and other anti-inflammatory agents like aspirin and ibuprofen.

Casbolt said Lay, an expert in the inflammatory process, had predicted five years ago that compounds that selectively inhibit the enzyme cyclooxygenase 2 (COX2), like Merck's recently withdrawn anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx and Pfizer's Celebrex, would cause health problems in some users.

The new indomethacin variants developed by Lay simultaneously inhibit both COX1 and COX2. Casbolt said the company plans to begin human clinical trials later this year.

It is also planning a clinical trial in 2006 of its third drug candidate, a platinum-based anti-cancer molecule that Casbolt said should have substantial advantages over the standard chemotherapy drug cis-platin.

Where cis-platin binds covalently to the DNA of cancerous cells, disrupting their replication, the new drug developed by Ass Prof Janice Aldrich-Wright at the University of Western Sydney is an intercalating compound with a planar shape, that disrupts replication by inserting itself between DNA bases.

"One of the problems with cis-platin is that it is seriously insoluble in water," Casbolt said. "Our compound is some 20,000 times more soluble, and for some reason seems to be more selective for cancerous cells than cis-platin.

"We've trialled it in animal models, and it doesn't cause hair loss and is less toxic to the liver and kidneys."

The company raised $800,000 from private investors last November, and another $500,000 in March.

"We want to develop a commercial product as rapidly as possible, and there's some low-hanging fruit we think we can get at," Casbolt said.