First day of dealings on AIM
e-Therapeutics plc
28 November 2007
Press Release 28 November 2007
e-Therapeutics plc
('e-Therapeutics' or 'the Company')
First Day of Dealings on AIM
e-Therapeutics, the systems biology drug discovery company, today announces the
first day of trading of its Ordinary Shares on the AIM market of the London
Stock Exchange ('AIM'). WH Ireland is acting as Nominated Adviser and Cornhill
Asset Management as Broker. The market epic code is ETX.
A placing of 1,985,075 Ordinary Shares at 67 pence each has raised £1.33 million
(gross) for the Company. The total issued share capital of the Company is
55,710,103 and the market capitalisation of the Company at the Placing Price
following Admission will be £37.33 million.
Commenting on the Placing and Admission, Professor Malcolm Young, Chief
Executive Officer of e-Therapeutics, said: 'We are delighted by the response of
investors to the flotation of e-Therapeutics. The funds raised will enable us to
develop and broaden our drug development pipeline, and will significantly raise
the profile of e-Therapeutics with potential licensing partners. I would like to
thank all of our investors for recognising the exciting opportunity that lies
ahead.'
Terms used in this announcement have the same meanings as the defined terms in
the Company's Admission Document dated 22 November 2007, which is available on
the Company's website (www.etherapeutics.co.uk).
Placing and Admission Statistics
Placing Price 67 pence
Number of Placing Shares to be issued pursuant to the Placing 1,985,075
Number of Ordinary Shares in issue on Admission 55,710,103
Placing Shares as a percentage of the enlarged issued share capital of the Company 3.56%
Gross proceeds of the Placing £1.33m
Estimated net proceeds of the Placing receivable by the Company £760,000
Market capitalisation of the Company on Admission at the Placing Price £37.33m
e-Therapeutics uses proprietary systems biology technology to discover potential
new treatments for diseases where there are either no existing treatments or
current treatments are unsatisfactory. Conventionally, drug discovery has been
done by identifying a single 'target' protein and screening a large number of
compounds against it to see whether they have affinity for the target protein.
Unfortunately, drug compounds rarely bind to just a single protein and their
binding to other proteins often results in unpredicted and adverse effects.
e-Therapeutics has a computer-based drug discovery platform that can predict the
biological effects of interaction of drug candidates with one or many proteins,
thereby enabling it to quickly identify drug candidates and also their likely
side effects.
The Company's drug discovery platform can be used to discover new drug compounds
and to find alternative indications for existing compounds, and combinations of
compounds. The platform has been validated in testing on several disease states
by successfully identifying drugs known in the scientific literature to have had
effects on that disease, and also identifying novel compounds that have
subsequently been shown to be active in that disease in laboratory tests. Over
the last two years, the Company has built a diverse portfolio of five drug
candidates, for which it has 10 product patent applications pending. The drug
portfolio is outlined in the table below:
Therapeutic need Candidate Stage
Asthma ETX9101 Phase II trials have commenced
Depression ETS6103 Regulatory permission granted for Phase II trials.
It is possible that may out license prior to Phase II
trials
Malignant melanoma ETS2101 Preclinical in vivo efficacy and safety studies have
commenced
Atherosclerosis ETS6107/ ETS6114 Due to be tested in preclinical in vivo efficacy and
safety studies
Antibiotic for MRSA/VRSA/VRE/ ETX1153 Reformulation is required before it can enter
C.difficile/S.epidermidis clinical trials
e-Therapeutics' discovery platform offers enormous potential for reducing the
costs and enhancing the productivity of pharmaceutical discovery and
development. The Company has entered into commercial licensing discussions with
a number of large pharmaceutical companies, who have recognised the value of the
Company's platform and pipeline.
For further information:
e-Therapeutics plc www.etherapeutics.co.uk
Malcolm Young +44 (0)191 233 1328
malcolm@etherapeutics.co.uk
WH Ireland
Richard Lindley +44 (0)113 394 6628
richard.lindley@wh-ireland.co.uk
Cornhill Asset Management
Tom Whitehead +44 (0) 207 645 8327
tomw@cornhillassetmanagement.com
Andrew Houchin +44 (0) 207 743 6468
andrewh@cornhillassetmanagement.com
Media enquiries:
Abchurch www.abchurch-group.com
Heather Salmond Tel: +44 (0) 20 7398 7704
heather.salmond@abchurch-group.com
Stephanie Cuthbert Tel: +44 (0) 7843 080 947
stephanie.cuthbert@abchurch-group.com
Ashley Tapp Tel: +44 (0) 7944 570 387
ashley.tapp@abchurch-group.com
Notes to Editors
e-Therapeutics plc is a systems biology drug discovery company. It has developed
proprietary computational systems to swiftly and accurately analyse and predict
how medicines interact with cells in the body. This optimises the probability of
identifying drug candidates with desirable efficacy and low toxicity. The
Company applies its novel, systematic approach to three areas of activity:
• discovery of new drugs;
• discovering novel uses for existing drugs; and
• analysis of the interactions between different drugs.
Amongst e-Therapeutics' pipeline of compounds in development are novel
antibiotics that have been shown to kill the 'superbug' MRSA, and a novel cancer
chemotherapy that has been shown to kill malignant cells at safe doses in a very
short time. Other candidate therapies in development are targeted at
atherosclerosis, asthma and depression. The Company is currently in negotiation
with a number of pharmaceutical companies, and is progressing the preclinical
and clinical development of these products.
For further information on e-Therapeutics visit www.etherapeutics.co.uk.
History and background
e-Therapeutics was founded on the results of research in neuroscience and
complex systems science in the laboratory of Professor Malcolm Young. This
research programme commenced in 1991 and received more than £10 million in
external research grant support, initially at Oxford and then at Newcastle
universities. The analytical tools developed in the research were spun out of
Newcastle University into the Company in 2003. The Company has developed its
core discovery team in Newcastle and it has a bioinformatics team in Ahmedabad,
India, taking advantage of the availability of very experienced
bioinformaticians, some of whom were formerly involved in the development of the
highly influential Human Protein Reference Database.
The task of drug discovery is that of finding a specific chemical compound that
binds to a specific protein or proteins in order to have a beneficial medical
effect, while ensuring that the compound does not have excessive undesirable
side effects by interacting with other proteins. The Company's system represents
proteins, and other key elements of a biological system, as nodes within
networks and maps their varying interactions. Computational methods developed by
the Company applied to these networks have been shown to predict biological
effect accurately. e-Therapeutics has developed proprietary computational
systems biology tools that can predict the biological effect of interference
with one or many proteins. This allows e-Therapeutics to rapidly identify drug
targets and to predict not only the effects of lead compounds but also the
likely side effects.
The strongest validation for e-Therapeutics' methodology is that, using only
internal data resources and analyses, it finds drugs known in the scientific
literature to have effects on a particular disease. For example, in an analysis
of 97 bacterial pathogens, the e-Therapeutics system successfully identified all
known antibiotic classes, including 103 known and secondary-effect antibiotics.
It also identified several new antibiotic candidates, which have since
demonstrated antibiotic effects in the laboratory. The probability of finding
this result by chance has been calculated as extremely low.
Corporate strategy and business model
The primary objective of e-Therapeutics is to develop intellectual property in
the form of a portfolio of patents for drugs, drug combinations and drug
targets. The Directors believe that the intellectual property produced will be
commercialised through the licensing of drug candidates to pharmaceutical or
larger biotechnology companies.
The pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries are facing specific challenges,
including declining R&D productivity and the significant impact of drug patent
expiry and generic competition rapidly eroding the revenue of such drugs
thereafter. e-Therapeutics' strategy is to lower drug development risk as far as
possible at the start of the development process as follows:
• lower intellectual property risk by examining a wider range of mechanisms than usual by
which a pharmacological effect may be brought about;
• lower efficacy risk through 'predictive de-risking' using its systems so that candidates
are only tested where there is very good reason to believe that the molecule will be
effective in the indication; and
• lower the safety and side effect risk of drug candidates by only testing when there is
very good reason to believe that the molecule will not deleteriously affect non-target
systems and tissues.
Effective lowering of these risks is expected to increase the probability of
e-Therapeutics' drug candidates progressing successfully through development
stages to registration.
The core competence of e-Therapeutics lies in utilising its technology platform
and surrounding processes to discover and develop drugs. The Company also
designs and manages clinical trials and outsources the conduct of such trials to
clinical research organisations. The Company intends to operate within these
areas of competence and has no plan at this juncture to expand into the
marketing or manufacturing of drugs.
Commercialisation has begun with the current portfolio of development
candidates. The Directors expect the Company's drug discovery and development
activities to be undertaken in future in a broader range of high value
therapeutic fields, but with a focus in cancer, anti-infectives and systemic
disorders.
Revenue model
The Company expects to receive payment predominantly through up-front payments,
milestone payments and royalties as a result of licensing transactions. This
framework reflects the way in which biotechnology companies and pharmaceutical
companies typically interact in this area. At present, licensing in the
pharmaceutical industry frequently takes place at one of two points in the
development cycle: either following pre-clinical results, or upon completion of
Phase II studies. The size of up-front and milestone payments for licensing
deals typically reflect this, usually being larger the later the stage of
development. For this reason, the Company intends to utilise its drug
development capabilities to advance compounds to these later stages of
development, subject to having sufficient funds to do so.
Market
The pharmaceutical industry has enjoyed a period of sustained growth with global
revenues of more than $600 billion in 2006. The industry now faces a major
problem in delivering further growth. The historic growth has largely been
achieved by efficient commercialisation and there is limited scope for further
improvement. Against this background, research and development productivity
continues to decline, despite substantial increases in expenditure.
Declining R&D productivity is a consequence of several factors, which have made
it increasingly difficult for the industry to address the three fundamental R&D
challenges which, in the Directors' opinion, are:
• Complexity: there are millions of possible biological targets and millions of potential
compounds to act on them. Given the complexity of biological systems, it has been hard to
predict clinical efficacy or toxicity from the information that is typically available
early in the discovery and development process.
• Speed: there is tremendous value in increasing the speed of the flow of compounds through
the R&D process to maximise the period of post-launch patent protection
• Unpredicted failure: failure, and particularly late stage failure, is extremely
expensive. These write off costs must be borne by the drugs that successfully reach the
market.
e-Therapeutics believes that its discovery platform offers enormous potential
for reducing the costs and enhancing the productivity of pharmaceutical
discovery and development. The Company has entered into commercial licensing
discussions with a number of large pharmaceutical companies, who have recognised
the value of the Company's platform and pipeline.
Directors
Professor Oliver James (aged 64), Non-executive Chairman
Oliver has been a non-executive director of BUPA since 1999 and was a
non-executive director of Goldsborough Health Care plc from when it floated on
the main market in 1995, until it was acquired by BUPA in 1997. He has also been
a non-executive director of the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation
Trust since 2006. Oliver qualified as a physician in 1975 and practised until
2004 when he became head of the medical faculty at Newcastle University. He was
senior vice president of the Royal College of Physicians from 1997 to 1999 and
has also been a member of a number of national and governmental medical related
boards and committees. Oliver joined the Company as a non-executive director in
October 2007.
Professor Malcolm Young (aged 47), Chief Executive Officer
Malcolm joined e-Therapeutics in 2003. He led the Company through its first
round of funding in 2005 and became its full-time chief executive in 2006. As
chief executive, Malcolm is responsible for developing the Company's strategy
and overseeing the operation of the business. Until 2006, Malcolm was Pro-Vice
Chancellor for Strategic Development at Newcastle University. Prior to that he
had been the Provost of the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering;
director of the Institute for Neuroscience; and director of the Complex Systems
Group at Newcastle University. The research expertise of his group lay in
complex systems analysis and informatics and its outputs included five
publications in Science and Nature and 10 in Proceedings and Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society. His research funding exceeded £11 million
between 1992 and 2007 and included programme and project grants for research on
complex systems from the Wellcome Trust (the world's largest medical research
charity), the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, through the UK's National
Core e-Science Initiative. He is one of 18 scientists worldwide nominated by the
Sunday Times as the 'Brains behind the 21st Century'.
John Cordiner (aged 41), Commercial and Finance Director
John is a chartered accountant and was formerly an investment banker and a
chemist. He has over 15 years' international business experience, having worked
in a variety of roles in the financial services and other industries, together
with specialised consulting roles for Deloitte, KPMG, and
PricewaterhouseCoopers. As an investment banker with Noble & Co, he specialised
in the life sciences and oil and gas sectors. John has also been involved in
advising venture capital funds in technology investment, including life
sciences. John joined the Company in late 2004 as commercial and finance
director and is responsible for commercial strategy and all financial aspects of
the Company's business.
Royston Drucker (aged 54), Medical Director
Roy qualified as a physician at Cambridge University in 1977. He is a fellow of
the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine, a founder and honorary member of the
Association for Human Pharmacology in the Pharmaceutical Industry, a fellow of
the Royal Society of Medicine, a member of the British Association of
Pharmaceutical Physicians and a member of the Securities Institute. In 1984,
following an eight year clinical career, he joined the research and development
division of Sterling-Winthrop Limited, becoming a senior departmental manager of
its department of biochemistry, with responsibilities for clinical pharmacology,
drug metabolism and bioanalysis in Europe. In 1985, he joined the pharmaceutical
research laboratories of The Upjohn Company and was appointed European head of
clinical pharmacology. He was also appointed an honorary research fellow in
clinical pharmacology at Guy's Hospital, London in 1985. He became executive
director and subsequently corporate vice president of drug development at The
Upjohn Company, based in the US. From 1996 until 2005, he was general manager of
Technomark Consulting Services Limited, a London based specialist service
company to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, with corporate finance,
venture capital and management consulting arms. Roy joined e-Therapeutics in
2005 and is currently the medical director, with responsibility for organising
and overseeing clinical trials for the Company's drug candidates.
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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