www.etherapeutics.co.uk
e-Therapeutics is a drug discovery and development company based in Oxford and Newcastle, UK. The Company is a pioneer of network pharmacology, a distinctive new approach to the discovery of medicines.
It has a clinical pipeline of four drugs set to enter clinical trials during 2012. The Company is listed on AIM with the ticker symbol ETX.
e-Therapeutics: 2012 represents key year for the business
Drug discovery firm e-Therapeutics (LON:ETX) is looking forward with confidence to next year, when it expects to see the first data from its new programme of clinical trials.
Meanwhile, the firm said today it was equally excited about the next wave of discovery work using its network pharmacology platform.
Speaking to Proactive Investors this afternoon e-Therapeutics’ chief financial officer, Daniel Elger, said: “The business was recapitalised in March and that has enabled all this development to occur.”
£16.7 million was raised back in the spring, which means that the firm has been able to both restart drug discovery activity and to take forward in the clinic its most promising candidates generated by the firm’s earlier discovery programmes.
In drug discovery, the firm has chosen to target complex diseases in which it believes its technology has particular strengths. Work is being concentrated mainly on cancer and degenerative diseases of the nervous system.
e-Therapeutics is recruiting additional scientists from a variety of disciplines that are critical to its discovery approach. These will soon move to the dedicated network pharmacology discovery unit that the firm is establishing near Oxford.
Meanwhile, the firm has prioritised four drugs resulting from earlier discovery work for development. These are led by ETS2101, an anti-cancer candidate, and ETX1153c, a treatment for patients harbouring the potentially-lethal bacterium C. difficile.
A key strength of e-Therapeutics is its network pharmacology system, according to Elger. “That’s the discovery engine that underpins the business,” he said, explaining that the computer-based system first looks at the network of proteins that make up a disease and then sets about identifying the key points among those proteins. e-Therapeutics then uses a drug database to find the right combinations of drugs that can be used to attack those key points and at the same time.
This approach has led to some counterintuitive results. For example, the ETS2101 drug was originally conceived as an anti-trauma drug that would be useful in treating head injuries, but “it was only through our platform that it was discovered it had potential as an anti-cancer treatment,” Elger told us.
ETS2101 and ETX1153c are to begin Phase I trials early next year. Meanwhile, the firm also has a drug aimed at depression that is already in Phase I trials and due to start Phase II trials soon. “This depression drug is further along, but we see the biggest opportunities in the anti-cancer drug and the C. difficile drug,” Elger said.
The upshot of this is that investors in e-Therapeutics can expect a “whole flow of data” to come out of these trials in 2012 and 2013. And by the end of 2013, Phase I data will be available on two of the firm’s drugs while Phase II data is expected on the other two drugs, which should mean the firm will be in a good position to achieve partnering deals with third parties.
Meanwhile, the firm will continue to use its network pharmacology platform to help it discover new drug candidates.
Announcing its results today, e-Therapeutics said it made a loss before tax of £1.8 million during the six months to July 31 compared with a loss of £1.2 million in the first half of the previous year.
“We now have the funds we need to advance our clinical-stage drugs through key milestones and to generate new drug candidates using our unique discovery platform in network pharmacology,” said Professor Malcolm Young, the firm’s chief executive officer, in the firm’s results statement earlier today. “e-Therapeutics has never been in a stronger position from which to create value for shareholders.”
In a research note on the firm today, broker Panmure Gordon highlighted the recent publication in the scientific journal Nature Medicine of a review on network pharmacology, which concluded that the approach “offers rich promise in drug development”.
The broker has set a price target of 76 pence for the shares, which were trading 8.3 per cent higher at 29.775 pence each this afternoon.
