todays age

And this is the reporter who told us as long ago as Feb that CSL would take over Zenyth (AMRAD)

"Antisense bounces back from darkest days"

Rebecca Urban
July 20, 2006
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WHEN the telephone rings unexpectedly in the middle of the night, it is rarely good news.

That was certainly the case on March 1 last year when Mark Diamond, chief executive of Melbourne-based drug developer Antisense Therapeutics, took a call from the company's founding director Stanley Crook about 3am.

Overseas, drug companies Biogen and Elan Corporation had announced that they were withdrawing their multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri from the market following reports that several patients had contracted a potentially fatal disease of the nervous system.

Mr Diamond was told that clinical trials of Tysabri were to be suspended while an investigation on its side effects was carried out.

Although Antisense had no business with Biogen or Elan, the news had serious ramifications for the local biotech, which had just started clinical studies of its experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis.

While Antisense's compound, codenamed ATL1102, was different to Tysabri, it worked by targeting the same protein. The Antisense board had no choice but to investigate whether there were implications for its own study.

When the market was informed later that day, Antisense's shares fell 26 per cent to 8.9¢. When the company announced a week later that it would suspend the trial pending an investigation by its medical advisory board, shares dived again.

"It was disappointing to have to deal with something that was out of our control," Mr Diamond said.

"We had not missed a development milestone in the time that I had been with the company."

Fast-forward 18 months and Tysabri has been reintroduced to the market after the US Food and Drug Administration cleared it. And Antisense's phase II trial of ATL1102 in 80 patients has been deemed safe to continue.

While those shareholders who have stuck with the company, including biotech investor Circadian Technologies, have yet to see the value of their holdings recover, Mr Diamond said he was confident about the prospects for the drug.

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, often disabling disease that randomly attacks the central nervous system.

The cause is still unknown and an estimated 2.5 million people around the world have the disease.

And while there are treatments on the market, including Tysabri, several companies are trying to develop more effective and tolerable drugs.

Antisense began dosing trial subjects in Germany last month. The goal of the study is to collect evidence of the drug's effectiveness and results should be known by the middle of next year.

Antisense shares last closed at 2.5¢.