anti malaria treatment ready in 6months

great artical, more news coming, dont forget that mandela's son in law is on the board of emssa,




Eastland fighting malaria in children

Kayt Davies
Thursday, 21 December 2006

PERTH-based small market cap biotech company Eastland Medical Systems has made a quiet but dramatic entrance onto the global malaria stage, announcing the signing of an exclusive distribution agreement for a new anti-malaria treatment for Sub-Saharan Africa.



The new treatment involves a novel mode of delivery for an already-approved drug that the company says will be ready for sale in six months.

With confidentiality clauses cloaking much of the deal in secrecy and negotiations for other related agreements still in progress, Eastland executive director Doug Sims says the market will have to be patient, and wait for more details and news.

In the meantime though, he said the new treatment was exciting because it worked faster and more consistently than tablet delivery, which sometimes ran into problems with patients suffering malnutrition – common in the developing world – and diarrhoea, a common malaria symptom.

The new treatment will initially be developed for use with children, although Sims said it would also work at higher doses with adults and that another upside of it was that it could be administered to sleeping or unconscious patients.

He said this was an important feature because malaria resulted in brain swelling that, prior to killing its victims, was associated with loss of consciousness.

The agreement announced to the ASX yesterday was signed by Eastland's 65%-owned subsidiary, Eastland Medical Systems South Africa (EMSSA), and Star Medical-Botswana, and it will entitle EMSSA to distribute the new treatment to the 47 countries within Sub-Saharan Africa.

The new treatment uses artemisinin, the main drug currently used to fight malaria, meaning that approval processes will be faster than if a new drug was involved. Sims said some official trials would be required and that negotiations with South African authorities were underway about the protocols for these trials with an eye to having the drug ready for market by mid-2007.

He said a recent preliminary trial conducted at a Nigerian hospital had found the new treatment to be effective in reducing malaria symptoms in all of the patients treated.

Eastland chief executive Dermot Patterson said: "An additional advantage of the new treatment is the reduced need for continued hospitalisation, which will result in significant cost savings to governments and relief organisations."

He added that the agreement would help Eastland to build contacts in Africa and assist the marketing of its ClipOn device that converts standard syringes into safe, retractable needle injection and blood drawing devices.

Putting a dollar value on this week's announcement Patterson said that subject to regulatory approvals, Eastland estimates revenues of 200 million rand ($A36.5 million) in the second year of distribution growing to 400 million rand ($A72.9 million) by year four.


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