Crown research company signs US medicine deal

Government-owned Industrial Research Ltd (IRL) has signed a multi-million-dollar licensing deal for its breakthrough leukaemia drug that has produced a 25 per cent remission rate in end-stage cancer patients.

The deal with US biotechnology company BioCryst Pharmaceuticals announced yesterday sees the Crown research institute gain a share of an immediate US$10 million payment ($14.7 million) for its drug, Fodosine, developed with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

Clinical trials of the enzyme inhibitor by BioCryst in the United States have shown it to be effective against the relatively rare T-cell leukaemia, although "good data" is also coming through in the B-cell variant, which is 10 times more common, said IRL's Richard Furneaux.

End-stage cancer patients were involved in the trials, he said.

"These are refractory or relapsed cancer patients, who basically have had all other treatments and have been removed from those treatments because they're not working. Often people have even had bone marrow transplants and they fail."

BioCryst has applied to the FDA for special protocol assessment, which will include another trial with up to 50 patients. If the results are similar, the drug can be sold commercially by 2007.

Potentially, IRL could also receive an ongoing share of US$155 million ($228 million), conditional on continued success as the drug is developed for the market, with additional royalties from sales.

The deal - one of two multi-million-dollar agreements in three months - represents a massive turnaround for the research institute after 42 redundancies last year, and back-to-back years of losses.

An earlier deal saw BioCryst sub-license another drug, codenamed BCX4208, for controlling auto-immune diseases, to giant pharmaceutical company Roche. The drug is in the early stages of clinical trial, with three more planned for psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and organ transplant rejection.