biota goes shopping, page-16

I have been looking at their recent acquisitions.

MaxThera

PPAT - Lead to Pre-clinical stage
EPT - Hit to Lead stage on page 7 (or Target to Hit on page 19)

Prolysis

Gyrase - Lead to pre-clinical stage
CDI - Hit to Lead stage on page 10 (or Target to Hit on page 19)

From their own graph the drugs at the Lead to Pre-clinical stage have about 8 years to go to market if successful. Hit to Lead products have 10-11 years. The chances of success are (from their own graph) 1 in 21 to 1 in 11. I think these figures are for all drugs, antibacterials are much worse.


I know of a number of Australian companies which have excellent drugs at the phase II or phase III stage and are desperate for cash. Surely there are better targets out there at a more advanced stage of development.

The one factor in its favour is that you are sure to get lots of funding from govt health agencies. You will not need to spend the +$100m needed to get a product to market.


Interesting (2003) article on why large companies have exited the antibacterial field.

http://www.mombu.com/medicine/laboratory/t-why-is-big-pharma-getting-out-of-antibacterial-drug-discovery-vancomycin-depression-ciprofloxacin-antibiotic-down-3579249.html

While there is a desperate need for new anti-bacterials, drug companies have basically exited the field, instead focusing on chronic illnesses rather than acute diseases.
In the early 1990s large companies restarted antibacterial research to address the emergence of antibacterial drug resistance.

In the early 2000’s Aventis, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Glaxo SmithKline, Proctor and Gamble, Roche, and Wyeth have greatly curtailed, wholly eliminated or spun off their antibacterial research.

Most antibacterial use is for short courses of therapy. ...Therefore, to achieve reasonable (i.e. 'commercially attractive') levels of income, especially for short-course therapies, it is necessary to demand prices that to the public appear to be excessive. It is rare for any public discussion on the cost of pharmaceutical products not to hear the opinion voiced that 'drugs are too expensive and frequently beyond the ability of many people to pay for them'.

...anti-infective drugs are considered 'life-saving' medications and, as such, are often the subject of aggressive price controls, especially outside of the United States. In addition, outright flaunting of intellectual property laws has resulted in the proliferation of low priced generics, often of lower quality, in both developing and developed countries. This particular distortion of the market for anti-infective drugs may serve to drive down prices but it also most assuredly will drive away companies from research in this field.



Mal