FOCUS-Bristol-Myers joins cancer race
February 11, 1998 01:58 PM
By Jonathan Birt
LONDON, Feb 11 (Reuters) - The race to market a new generation of cancer treatments hotted up on Wednesday after the world's biggest cancer company Bristol-Myers Squibb Co BMY signed a development deal with Britain's Chiroscience Group Plc .
Bristol-Myers is to undertake development of two Chiroscience drugs that inhibit matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) enzymes, which are thought to play a key role in the way tumours grow and spread through the body.
Optimists believe drugs of this type could one day generate sales of billions of dollars and be taken on a daily basis to stop cancers from reappearing.
The U.S. company will take on development of D2163, which started safety trials in humans last month, and D1927 at its laboratories in Princeton in return for undisclosed milestone and royalty payments.
Although the group's share price reaction was muted, rising 2.7 percent or seven pence to 268-1/2p, British analysts said the agreement was a major boost for Chiroscience, putting its drugs at the forefront of an increasingly crowded field.
"This is a very significant deal for Chiroscience," Dresdner Kleinwort Benson analyst Jane Fisken said. "They couldn't have a better marketing partner for a cancer compound."
Bristol-Myers and Chiroscience believe the two drugs represent a new generation of MMPs, reducing or eliminating side effects such as joint pain which have been seen in similar treatments drugs under development.
The current MMP race leader is British Biotech Plc , whose inhibitor Marimastat is in late-stage trials against a range of cancers including pancreatic and small cell lung cancer. British Biotech shares were down 1-1/4 at 98-1/4.
Other competitors include Germany's Bayer AG AG, whose BAY-129566 is in Phase II trials, while U.S. group Glycomed Inc and Japan's Sankyo Co Ltd have a joint product, Galardin, in late stage, or Phase III, development.
Last month F. Hoffmann-La Roche and Agouron Pharmaceuticals Inc AGPH of California dropped work on an MMP inhibitor because they said it wasn't sufficiently superior to existing therapies to justify further investment.
But Chiroscience said having the world's biggest cancer-treatment company on side was a significant vote of confidence in its products, which it sees as a new generation of MMPs.
"We know from experience of the first generation of the drugs that these will be most powerful when used with other anti-cancer treatments such as surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy," Chiroscience's business development director Andy Richards told Reuters.
"Bristol-Myers Squibb are ideal because they have the broadest spread of oncology drugs."
Chiroscience also argues that its gene expression technology, based at its Darwin Discovery division in Seattle, Washington, also offers a major advantage over rivals, giving it a better picture of what is needed to hit and inhibit growth in different types of tumour.
"It's a very important boost for Chiroscience," Robertson Stephens & Co analyst Nick Woolf said.
"It definitely makes their products significant competition in the field of MMPIs, and with Bristol Myers looking at gene expression it could make them one of the leaders in the new generation of MMPs," he added. ((London newsroom, +44 171 542-8823 fax +44 171 583-3763, uk.equities.news@reuters.com))
REUTERS
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