UK antibody specialist explores fundraising
By David Firn in London
Published: January 6 2002 16:48 | Last Updated: January 6 2002 17:33
NeuTec Pharma, a drug development company set up by two doctors from Manchester University, is planning to raise about £10m ($14.41m) in a listing on Aim next month.
NeuTec concentrates on two of the hottest areas of biotechnology: antibodies and antibiotic-resistant infections.
The flotation could make millionaires of James Burnie and Ruth Matthews, the professors behind the company. The pair, who founded NeuTec in 1997, owns 16 per cent of the loss-making company, although they will not be selling any of their shares. Manchester University, will also retain its 14.5 per cent stake.
Analysts believe the flotation will value NeuTec at over £20m, almost double what it was worth when 3Ii, which owns 39 per cent, led a £6.1m private equity round in 1998.
About 100,000 people pick up antibiotic-resistant infections in UK hospitals every year. Treatment costs the National Health Service about £1bn.
Antibodies are the body's natural infection fighting system, seeking out and destroying invading pathogens without harming the body.
Advances in genetic engineering have taught researchers to harness antibodies to create smart drugs that target specific diseases. As a result antibodies are the fastest-growing class of new medicines.
NeuTec isolated antibodies from the blood of people who successfully fought off infections. It then created genetically engineered bacteria to manufacture antibodies. Mycograb is such an antibody and is used to treat invasive candidiasis, a life-threatening yeast infection. Aurograb targets MRSA, the staphylococcus bacterium that is resistant to almost all known antibiotics; it also seems to reverse the bacteria's ability to resist antibiotics.
The finding offers an intriguing clue to why the patients who originally produced the antibodies survived, and may also give a new lease of life to medicines that have become almost useless against serious infections. So far disease-inducing bacteria have overpowered every new drug thrown at them since antibiotics were discovered 40 years ago.
Prof Burnie says a combination of the antibody and antibiotic could prevent the "apocalypse scenario" - outbreaks of totally resistant bugs. "We have used the human immune system to select a treatment that has evolved over millions of years. If resistance was going to emerge it would have done so by now," he says.
Much of the money raised in the flotation will be used to fund the clinical trials needed to get marketing approval for the treatments. Six other treatments are in early stages of development.
Hoare Govett is advising the company on the placing.
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