Indeed Jonty, The Michael Fox foundation was on my radar last year, there were some exchanges on this thread regarding their transdermal work.
The vaccine part of our research is not regularly discussed on this thread, even though it represents a very strong side of our research business in our earlier days. When we go back to 2006, Michael Fox funded research on Rotigotine transdermal patches showed promise :
Neupro, with the active ingredient rotigotine, is a dopamine receptor-agonist innovatively formulated as a transdermal delivery system, a patch Open-label clinical trial results presented at the EFNS showed that patients treated with a dopamine agonist (e.g. ropinirole, pramipexole) were able to easily switch overnight to an effective regimen of rotigotine transdermal patch.
A report from two open-label trials showed that transdermal rotigotine improved sleep quality in Parkinson's disease patients to a clinically significant extent. In particular, a decrease in the number of sleep-related motor disturbances and a reduction in the frequency of nocturia were observed.
Why this had to be improved though were the evident side effects :
The most common adverse events associated with the use of rotigotine transdermal system were application site reactions as well as nausea, headache, somnolence and vomiting.
The German side is represented by Wolfgang H. Oertel and Marcus M. Unger of Philipps University Marburg, which leads one straight to Merck which financed a study on novel peptides, amongst others angiotensin II, a peptide. That leads us straight to Affiris AG :
On the basis of the company's own patents, AFFiRiS develops tailor-made peptide vaccines against Alzheimer's disease, atherosclerosis, Parkinson's disease and four other conditions with an urgent medical requirement and attractive market volumes. Alzheimer's is the current guideline indication, and here two potential products have just completed the phase I clinical studies. In October 2008 GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals became the licence partner for the Alzheimer's vaccine. The contract envisages (milestone-dependent) payments of up to EUR 430 million. A payment of EUR 10 million was triggered in October by the positive completion of two clinical phase I studies. At present AFFiRiS has 60 highly qualified employees working at the St. Marx campus in Vienna, Austria (www.affiris.com).
My personal take is a second program within GSK to finance a transdermal vaccine program with OBJ technologies. I never assumed that GSK would reduce its interest to FIM technologies only.
OBJ Price at posting:
1.9¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)