ALCHEMIA, VAST BIOSCIENCE
Vast Bioscience says it has acquired Alchemia’s versatile assembly on stable templates
(VAST) drug discovery platform, for $100,000 upfront and royalties.
Vast chairman Prof Peter Andrews told Biotech Daily that he was one of the patent
holders on the VAST platform as well as a founder and former chairman of Alchemia.
The former Queensland chief scientist was previously the head of chemistry at the
Victorian College of Pharmacy, now Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Vast co-director Richard Marsden told Biotech Daily that he was a director of the
Brisbane-based Implicit Bioscience and was a long term investor in Australian
biotechnology companies.
In a media release, Vast said it was a “new private company funded by a group of
Brisbane investors”.
The company said that last year Alchemia “suffered a major setback when its cancer drug
HA-irinotecan missed the primary endpoint of its phase III trial” and it had sought
corporate partnerships for VAST and other technology platforms in order to return capital
to shareholders (BD: Oct 27, 2014).
In December, Alchemia appointed the New York-based Evolution Life Science Partners
“to assist with the execution of a strategic transaction” for the VAST drug discovery
platform (BD: Dec 9, 2014).
Today, Prof Andrews said his company was “delighted by the opportunity to further
develop and commercialize this great Australian technology”.
“The remarkable diversity and selectivity of the VAST platform offers exceptional potential
to develop better and safer drugs,” Prof Andrews said.
“Indeed, that potential has already been validated by a multi-target deal with global
pharmaceutical company Astrazeneca, with the potential to receive $240 million in
milestone payments,” Prof Andrews said.
“We are looking forward to working with both Australian and international research
organisations and pharmaceutical developers, including Astrazeneca, to develop drug
candidates based on the VAST technology for the benefit of patients, whilst retaining in
Queensland the core skills and knowledge of Alchemia employees responsible for VAST's
development,” Prof Andrews said.
In a media release, Alchemia said it would receive an upfront payment of $100,000, a
tiered royalty stream with an entitlement to 10 percent of net revenues from existing
collaboration agreements and five percent of net revenues from other sources.
Alchemia said that Vast Bioscience would assume liability for any transaction fees and
payable to Evolution Life Science Partners.
The company said that along with Astrazeneca there were collaboration agreements with
the Institute of Molecular Bioscience and the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences
and the higher royalty rate for existing agreements was in recognition of its investment in
these programs, and as a result of the transaction it would not incur any further
expenditure on VAST beyond June 30, 2015.
The company said that the VAST platform “enabled the world’s first systematic road map
towards developing drugs with high [three-dimensional] complexity with improved
selectivity and safety.
Alchemia said that drugs developed with more three-dimensional (3D) complexity
delivered superior target selectivity and safety but were “typically found serendipitously
and [were] therefore a rare event” and the platform allowed access to unique molecular
shapes, to a diversity scanning array of 14,000 3D probes and to a suite of proprietary
chemistries that provided the ability to optimize the molecules towards 3D drugs.
Alchemia was up 0.1 cents or 2.9 percent to 3.5 cents.
ACL Price at posting:
0.8¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
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