New AID's CURE HIV drug global rights for AvexaThursday, 25...

New AID's CURE






HIV drug global rights for Avexa

Thursday, 25 January 2007

AVEXA has bought the North American rights to its HIV drug candidate, apricitabine, from Shire – the company it was co-developing the drug with. Avexa chief executive Dr Julian Chick said the deal gave Avexa worldwide rights to market apricitabine and "substantially expands the expected scope of Avexa's apricitabine business".

The deal announced this week will see Avexa pay $A12.7 million, plus an 8 million escrowed Avexa shares as well as undisclosed milestones and royalties for the US and Canadian rights.

Chick said the funds raised in Avexa's recent share purchase plan would be used to offset the upfront payment.

He added that the North American market represented around 50% of the global HIV drugs sales market – with the US being the single largest market for HIV drugs – and said "this greatly enhances our commercialisation strategy for apricitabine and provides us more flexibility for taking the project forward."

The apricitabine technology was originally developed by Canadian company BioChem Pharma, which was acquired by UK-based Shire in 2000.

Chick said: "In 2003-04 they divested most of their anti-viral portfolio and we did a licensing and co-development deal with them for apricitabine that we have now converted into a straight licensing deal."

Asked if he thought that holding the worldwide rights would make the project more attractive to new potential partners he said: "Absolutely. It's a case of the sum of the parts being worth more when they are held by one company."

Background Notes

Apricitabine is currently in a Phase 2b clinical trial, for which recruitment was completed last month. Results from the 21-day dosing period are due to be announced in the first quarter of 2007.

The trial has recruited HIV patients who are failing existing therapies, in particular those people that have HIV containing the M184V mutation. This HIV mutation is associated with prolonged treatment with other nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTi) used in first line therapy.

Avexa is positioning apricitabine as the NRTi drug of choice for NRTi resistant patients.