School of Pharmacy spin-out receives €100K milestone payment

Licensing payment

The biopharmaceutical company Lipoxen, a spin-out from London’s School of Pharmacy, is to receive a milestone payment of €100,000 from Intervet, part of the Schering-Plough Corp, which will use Lipoxen’s proprietary PolyXen protein drug-delivery technology to develop sustained-release insulin for the veterinary health market.

This collaboration targets a veterinary market worth $40 million. The agreement with Intervet also provides Lipoxen with clinical, regulatory and sales milestone payments, in addition to royalties on future product sales.

Lipoxen says its PolyXen technology increases the therapeutic half-life of protein drugs, allowing them to be administered less frequently. It works by linking naturally occurring polysialic acid polymers to the therapeutic proteins without altering their biological activity, thus limiting potential toxicity, increasing their solubility and enhancing their immunological capacity.

Scott Maguire, CEO of Lipoxen, said: “We are delighted that we have achieved this first important milestone in our agreement with Intervet. As part of this four-step technology transfer, we have shown that the sustained-release insulin product, developed based on our PolyXen technology, works consistently to produce sustained insulin activity in the target animal species”.

He added: “The achievement of this Intervet technology transfer milestone with sustained insulin, gives me confidence that we should be able to demonstrate similar benefits in humans. We are currently conducting an exploratory Phase I study with our own human sustained-release insulin, SuliXen, in comparison to Sanofi Aventis’ Lantus, which achieved sales in excess of €2 billion in 2007, and we expect to report the results of this study in the second quarter of 2008.”

The payment follows Lipoxen’s licence agreements with Baxter International Inc. and Serum Institute of India. Other companies partnering with Lipoxen include Amgen Inc., Genetech Inc., Genzyme Inc. and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.