Monday December 01 2008 | Biotechnology feed | All feeds
|
|
Monday December 01 2008 | Biotechnology feed | All feeds
|
|
|
Second deal for Inpharmatica's
ADME team further validates its recent acquisition and the downstream
extension of its PharmaCarta[TM] platform
London and Cambridge, UK,
September 4, 2003 -- Inpharmatica Ltd ("Inpharmatica or
Company"), the selective drug discovery company, today announced that it
has entered into a two-year agreement with British Biotech, the LSE and NASDAQ
listed biopharmaceutical company, for the provision of ADME (absorption,
distribution, metabolism and excretion) services in connection with its drug
discovery activities. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Under the terms of the agreement,
Inpharmatica's ADME team will provide assays, analysis and interpretation of
ADME data for a number of different project teams at British Biotech. An
experienced ADME consultant from Inpharmatica will form part of the British
Biotech project teams and manage the interaction between the project teams and
Inpharmatica's range of ADME services. ADME studies are an important component
of the optimization phase of drug development. They help screen molecules for
qualities that make them desirable as drug candidates and ultimately, drugs.
Inpharmatica's recently acquired ADME capability extends its PharmaCarta[TM]
chemogenomics platform, providing a more comprehensive range of services to
customers and enhancing the Company's internal discovery capabilities.
Commenting on the announcement, Dr. Mike Tarbit, Senior Vice President - Preclinical R&D at Inpharmatica, said:
"We are delighted to be
entering into this relationship with British Biotech. Inpharmatica's extensive
lead optimization experience underpins all of our in vitro and in silico
technologies and enables us to offer state-of-the-art support to
discovery companies such as British Biotech, who can then manage their ADME
needs in a flexible and cost effective way."
Commenting on the announcement, Dr
David Knowles, Research & Development Director of British Biotech, said:
"We have selected Inpharmatica to support our lead optimization activities because they have a proven ability to assist the effective progression of a number of our discovery and lead optimization programmes. Their expertise will be invaluable, not only at performing various in vitro ADME assays but also in helping plan and interpret the results of pharmacokinetics experiments."
About British Biotech:
www.britishbiotech.com
British Biotech is an R&D-based biotechnology company, with structure-based drug design technology and a broad development pipeline. Its strategy is to build a profitable company through organic growth and by pursuing consolidation opportunities. The acquisition of RiboTargets in April 2003 gave British Biotech a discovery base and innovative programmes which are intended to provide one development candidate each year. At the time of that acquisition British Biotech stated that further acquisitions or mergers would be necessary in order to build a more extensive and mature pipeline. This strategy seeks to optimize the balance of risk, reward and timing for the sustained delivery of therapeutic drugs to key markets. British Biotech currently has four product candidates in clinical development and one in preclinical development. Three of these product candidates are in the field of cancer treatment, one is for acute thrombotic disorders and one for community-acquired pneumonia. Pipeline product candidates include: * BB-10153, a novel recombinant human plasminogen, for the treatment of acute thrombotic disorders. This is currently in a Phase II study in approximately 70 patients with acute myocardial infarction. If this study is successful, it is intended to seek a pharma partner to support the full development of this compound. * BB-10901, a tumour-activated prodrug designed to treat small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and other cancers that are CD56-positive. BB-10901, with once weekly dosing, is in a Phase II clinical study and, with more frequent dosing, is in a Phase I clinical study. * MG98, a second generation antisense compound targeted at cancer. This is currently in Phase I trials being conducted by British Biotech, its partner MethylGene Inc, and its co-partner MGI Pharma, in patients with liquid and solid tumours. * BB-83698, British Biotech's lead peptide deformylase (PDF) inhibitor, targeted at patients hospitalised with community-acquired pneumonia. A Phase I study of an intravenous formulation of BB-83698 in healthy volunteers is under way. * R140, an oral GABAA agonist for treating cancer pain. This is in the final stages of preclinical safety testing and is scheduled to enter clinical development by the end of 2003. British Biotech also has a number of late-stage discovery programmes. These include a collaboration with Serono evaluating metalloenzyme inhibitors as new treatments for serious inflammatory disease and a programme to develop a synthetic, small molecule inhibitor of Hsp90, a drug target predicted to have relevance to a broad range of cancer types. The Hsp90 inhibitor programme is scheduled to produce a candidate for pre-clinical development by the end of 2003. British Biotech's recent acquisition of RiboTargets brought additional discovery capabilities to the British Biotech Group. British Biotech uses structure-based drug design technologies to identify and progress rapidly lead compounds into pre-clinical development. These capabilities, combined with a detailed understanding of the interactions between selected drug targets and small molecules at the atomic level and of the potential drug-like properties of compounds early in the process, are designed to accelerate the complex process of drug discovery.
About Inpharmatica:
www.inpharmatica.com
Inpharmatica Ltd, the selective
drug discovery company, focuses its discovery efforts upon the selection of
quality drug targets, quality leads that act against those targets and quality
drug candidates, thereby reducing attrition in the drug discovery process.
The Company's flagship technology platform is PharmaCarta[TM], a computational
chemogenomics system. It links genomic and proteomic space with chemistry and
provides a unique approach to hit identification, lead generation and drug
optimisation for druggable targets. Biopendium[TM] is an integral part of
PharmaCarta[TM] that is also available to clients as a stand-alone product.
Inpharmatica's platform utilizes the massive computing power of the Company's
2,500- processor compute farm, one of the largest in the world.
Founded in 1998, Inpharmatica's
technology is based on research from Professor Janet Thornton's group at
University College London. Employing approximately 100 staff, Inpharmatica is
headquartered in London where it has its own in-house laboratory facilities.
These laboratory facilities provide experimental validation of in silico
discoveries, enabling Inpharmatica (and its strategic partners) to advance
novel drug targets identified through its application of PharmaCarta[TM] and
to develop novel drugs against those targets. The Company's ADME and chemistry
facilities are located on the Cambridge Science Park and provide support for
its internal discovery programmes as well as contract ADME services.
Inpharmatica operates a hybrid business model with four distinct components: i. Internal discovery programmes for long-term value generation;
ii. Application of PharmaCarta[TM]
to research programmes of collaborators, generating mid-term value through
research payments, milestone payments and royalties;
iii. Biopendium[TM] licensing to
generate near-term revenues; and
iv. ADME Optimisation to generate
near-term revenues and extend the capabilities of PharmaCarta[TM].
These components are outlined further below: Internal Drug Discovery is focused upon discovering, validating and finding leads against highly druggable targets mined from the human genome, and has resulted in the Company filing patents over more than 200 novel proteins to date. The Company's lead discovery programme is focused upon the development of 16 novel Nuclear Receptors ("NR's"). NR's are a family of proteins widely considered to be both druggable and of high therapeutic interest. Drugs targeted against NR's generate more than $10bn in sales annually. Inpharmatica's novel NR's represent a more than a 30% increase on those identified in the public domain.
PharmaCarta[TM] is the Company's
knowledge-based chemogenomics technology platform which drives the discovery
process from gene to drug candidate. Inpharmatica applies PharmaCarta[TM] both
in collaboration with third parties and for internal drug discovery. The
Company concluded its first PharmaCarta[TM] collaboration, for the
identification of novel protein therapeutics, with Serono in July 2001, a
collaboration that was expanded in January 2003 and extended in August 2003.
Since then, the Company has concluded further PharmaCarta[TM] collaborations
with Chiron and Galapagos.
Biopendium[TM] is the Company's
proteome annotation resource, accessed by partners through commercial license.
It is the world's most comprehensive annotation resource; enabling rapid high
throughput annotation of large datasets for target prioritisation, target
mining and microarray analysis. Inpharmatica's non-exclusive subscription
collaborators include Pfizer, Genentech, Serono, Daiichi and Riken.
Inpharmatica also has a joint venture with Celera to develop a special edition
of the Biopendium[TM] that incorporates Celera's proprietary genomic data (Celera
Edition Biopendium[TM]).
ADME Optimization is the latest
offering from Inpharmatica, providing a further enhancement of PharmaCarta[TM],
and so moving the Company's drug discovery capabilities downstream.
Inpharmatica makes the in silico, in vitro and Lead Optimization
experience of its experienced ADME team available to third parties, such as
other biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, on a fee for service basis.
This team is based on the Cambridge Science Park and announced its first deal
with Ionix in August 2003.
|
|
|
