A winning year for IRL and Australasia’s biotechnology industry
July 2006
Industrial Research Limited’s (IRL) Carbohydrate Chemistry platform has delivered the Australasian Biotech industry’s biggest year on record - since the industry was founded in Australia and New Zealand in the mid 1980’s.
Two carbohydrate drug candidates that were discovered by IRL & Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Einstein) and then licensed to BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, have now been sublicensed to international pharmaceutical companies Roche and MundiPharma. Pending future development of the drugs, the deal value equates to a combined US $680M in milestone payments plus royalties.
The financial returns from these discoveries will be shared with BioCryst Pharmaceuticals – a US NASDAQ listed company that has undertaken the initial clinical trials.
The next generation of drug candidates underway from the same inventors (Drs Peter Tyler, Gary Evans and Richard Furneaux of IRL and Professor Vern Schram of Albert Einstein College of Medicine - Einstein) are now progressing into pre-clinical development in the fields of cancer and anti-bacterial treatment.
Dr Gary Evans says to help take these towards clinical trials, Einstein and IRL are negotiating a licensing deal which will allow the licensee to then establish a new company in Cambridge, USA.
“The carbohydrate scientists in NZ will play an active role in supporting the chemistry needs of the new company.”
Dr Peter Tyler says the strength of what has already been achieved and what is geared up for the future, doesn’t just end there though.
“We have been working on anti-malarial drugs that are beginning to show promise. We are hopeful of attracting research funding in the next few months to assist in the drug’s development.
”The chemistry focus at IRL has also played a significant role in supporting the rapid growth and success of GlycoSyn during 2005/2006. GlycoSyn is a business unit of IRL that uses chemical synthesis to provide contract-based discovery, process development and cGMP manufacture of drug candidates.
GlycoSyn has increased its revenue by 300% this financial year. This is largely due to major contracts to produce the initial drug candidates that are now in further development with Australian and New Zealand-based biotechnology companies.
Several key biotechnology companies have made recent announcements relating to some fantastic success stories and many of these have built off expertise from GlycoSyn. Clients include Starpharma Holdings, Antipodean Biotechnology, Spinifex Pharmaceuticals, Radpharm and Neuren Pharmaceuticals.
Tim Boyd, Business Development - GlycoSyn, says it has been a busy year and credit must go to the skilled team of engineers and chemists at GlycoSyn.
“They have shown time and time again how much our clients value their experience and technical ability.
"We work with our clients as partners in their development program rather than just another service provider or vendor. The development of pharmaceuticals is a complex and risky process - we understand this and continuously look at ways to diminish the risk for our clients."
IRL is now recognised as having the largest combined concentration of carbohydrate chemistry and cGMP manufacturing expertise in the world. IRL’s Chemistry platforms and GlycoSyn together, now employ over 90 staff, with forecast revenue of greater than $20M NZD for 2007.