LONDON, June 28 -- PR Newswire/ Asianet
Arrow Therapeutics, the London based anti-infectives drug discovery and development company, has announced that its antiviral for Respiratory Syncytial Virus has successfully completed Phase I trials.
The trials were carried out in healthy volunteers in the UK; the compound was shown to be safe and well tolerated with pharmacokinetics indicating once daily oral dosing. Phase ll trials are planned for the second half of 2004.
RSV is the cause of one-fifth of all lower respiratory tract infections worldwide, and is increasingly recognised as representing a serious threat to patient groups with poorly functioning or immature immune systems. Hospitalisations arising from this virus result in substantial healthcare costs. The only significant product currently sold for RSV is 'Synagis', an expensive monoclonal antibody from MedImmune/Abbott, which had sales of US$849 million in 2003, and which is widely expected to approach or exceed US$1 billion in 2004. This product is used for prophylaxis in premature and other high risk infants only, and so accesses a single sub-segment of just one of the potential markets for an RSV product.
The main patient groups at risk are:
- Infants under 2 years, of whom 2% are hospitalised each year. There is
also growing evidence of a link between severe RSV in infancy and the
occurrence of recurrent wheezing and childhood asthma.
- Elderly adults
- Adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and congestive
heart failure.
- Immuno-compromised individuals.
A product able to access all these patient groups will undoubtedly have blockbuster potential.
Arrow plans to partner the RSV project after clinical proof of concept and Ken Powell, CEO, is very happy with the response so far, commenting, "There is much commercial interest in our unique small molecule for RSV, reflecting the significant market potential of the product".
Notes to Editors
Arrow Therapeutics
Arrow Therapeutics was founded in 1998, and is focused exclusively on novel anti-infective drug discovery and development. Based in central London with 75 employees, the product pipeline includes novel antibacterial and antiviral lead and clinical compounds. The lead project is a compound to treat Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) which is due to enter Phase ll clinical studies in the second half of 2004. The lead compound from Arrow's Hepatitis C project is planned to enter clinical development in early 2005 and novel antibacterial compounds are at late lead optimization stage.
Compounds will be licensed at stages between pre-clinical and Phase IIb depending on the therapeutic area. Seed funding of GBP1.5 million was provided by Unibio of London who also invested in the first major funding round completed in July 2000 along with GIMV Belgium (lead), Alta Partners USA, 3i Group London, TVM Munich, and NVM Edinburgh which brought in GBP11.1 million. The same group provided a further GBP7 million in January 2002. The latest funding round was completed in Autumn 2003 raising over GBP21 million from the USA, Japan and Europe. Atlas Venture is the now the lead investor. www.arrowt.co.uk
Press Contacts:
Ken Powell
CEO
Tel: 00-44-(0)207-015-1002
or Margaret Walsh
Head of Business Development
00-44-(0)207-015-1003
SOURCE: Arrow Therapeutics
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