Lipoxen heads to Colorado for diabetes collaboration

Materials transfer agreement

Lipoxen plc,  a company spun out of the School of Pharmacy at the University of London, has entered into a materials transfer agreement with the Aurora, Colorado-based Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes. Lipoxen will provide the Barbara Davis Center with SuliXen, its proprietary long-acting formulation of insulin, for initial preclinical studies in models of diabetes. The evaluation is designed to explore whether SuliXen has the potential to reverse, limit or prevent the development of type I diabetes.

A similar evaluation will be conducted with Sanofi-Aventis’ Lantusâ, the world’s largest selling insulin product, which generated sales of over $3 billion in 2007.

The Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes is one of the largest diabetes programmes specialising in type-I diabetes research and care (both children and adults) in the world and is part of the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine.

Lipoxen and the Barbara Davis Center will evaluate SuliXen to see how it may deliver benefits for patients with type-I diabetes, an autoimmune disease in which the immune system destroys the insulin producing beta-cells of the pancreas. The insulin in beta-cells is thought to be one of the major targets that identifies these cells for destruction by the immune system.

Human clinical studies, says Lipoxen, have shown already that SuliXenTM very effectively suppresses endogenous insulin production (insulin produced by the patient). It is expected that this suppression may avert the autoimmune destruction of the beta-cells, which will no longer be “flagged” for destruction by the insulin that they produce. Furthermore, SuliXen itself has been found to be less able than natural insulin to fuel immune reactions, meaning that, in a second possible mode of action, it may interfere with the initiation and propagation of the T-cell mediated autoimmune processes that destroy beta cells. This evaluation of Sulixen will take place in animal models of type-I diabetes.

The agreement with Babara Davis Center, says Lipoxen, highlights further the interest in its PolyXen protein drug delivery platform. The platform is currently being evaluated by a number of the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies as a way of improving the delivery of products that are currently on the market or in development.

M. Scott Maguire, CEO of Lipoxen, said, “This agreement is in line with our strategy of maximising the benefits that we could bring to the overall diabetes population, a $17 billion market, with SuliXenTM, our unique long acting insulin product. Our Phase I clinical studies to-date have already shown that we are well on our way to have a product which will offer important important commercial advantages and if we could show that it could also play an important role in helping delay or prevent the onset of type-I diabetes, this would be a further very positive development for both the diabetes community and Lipoxen.”