Here is a transcript of Peter Johnson's very impressive interview on CNBC this morning, for those who missed it.
Mark Haines: What a week it's been for biotech. Several companies working to find a cure for cancer released positive news in the past few days. Our next company, Agouron Pharmaceuticals, has already tested their product in mice and they are now conducting clinical trials in humans. Agouron Pharmaceutical, based in San Diego, said yesterday it initiated pivotal trials of an oral anti- cancer drug to cut blood flow to tumors and also enhanced certain chemotherapy agents. When used on rodents, the drug inhibited the growth and spreading of tumors.
Mark Haines: This is the same angiogenesis approach we have heard from others, right?
Peter Johnson: Well angiogenesis is a general process of the formation of new blood vessels
to tumors and intervening in that process is the theme of a new class of drugs; one member of which made headlines over the weekend. We represent a slightly different approach to intervening in angiogenesis, but clearly anti-angiogenic anti-cancer drugs are a very hot topic at the moment.
Haines: This approach and theory has been around for quite awhile.
Johnson: It's been clear for a long time that if you can intervene in angiogenesis, you could keep tumors from becoming large and essentially they become wiped out by the immune system, and there have been several approaches to doing that over the past several years.
Haines: Are you the first company to test any angiogenesis product on humans?
Johnson: No, there have been other compounds with that general direction which have entered clinical trials but we are certainly among the leaders.
Haines That makes me think the initial ones failed?
Johnson: No, to the best of my knowledge the other clinical trials, which are slightly
ahead or behind us are still in progress.
Haines: Who are other companies?
Johnson:. One that comes to mind is British Biotech, the first company to bring our class of anti angiogenic agents, so called MMP inhibitors to clinical trials is British Biotech.
Haines: Is this like an arms race? Does it matter to you if you are first, second, or third?
Johnson: What I think is on the minds of anybody working in this field is to deliver solutions to patients that have serious problems with this rather grave disease. And it has almost never been a zero-sum game in which there is a single winner and a single product that
represents all the solutions. Our eye is on moving through clinical trials as quickly as possible
principally with the interests of patients in mind.
Haines: Assuming everything goes well and all goes as planned, all testing and trials and through the approval process, how long before you have a product on the market?
Johnson: Probably the year 2000.
Joe Kernen: The British biotech MMPI was very toxic wasn't it? That was going to be the answer and it's not, isn't that true?
Johnson: The full profile of the British Biotech compound awaits the outcome of clinical trials. I think it is clear that the first generation of MMP inhibitors may have some issues of side effects and safety that would limit their wider use. It is our hope in the compound that we have designed, AG3340, that we may have designed a way around some of those problems.
J.Kernen: Are you inhibiting something released by the tumor or something that is released by normal cells?
Johnson: Actually the MMP's which are the target of our drugs are components of normal cells and what we are trying to do is to compromise the ability of cancer cells to commandeer normal tissue in the formation of blood vessels and other processes that are involved in invasion and metastases.
J.Kernen: Do you foresee a day when cancer becomes a chronic illness that can be treated by taking drugs for the rest of your live? That's what I hear is possible, a combination of gene targeting, and maybe angiogenesis inhibitors and chemotherapy. They are saying they are seeing this on the horizon for the first time ever. It may be treatable as a chronic disease. Is that coming?
Johnson: Well, I think it's difficult to work in this area and not be cautious about trying to raise expectations. The war on cancer has been raging for 25 years. If curing mice represented a solution, why the war on cancer would have been over a long time ago. Having said that and having worked in another field, the field of HIV and AIDS, where even three or four years ago we were extremely pessimistic and now have seen a complete transformation in the ability to treat these patients. I think there is room for a cautious optimism, that as biology moves forward and is followed by ingenious invention of new drugs, that a new era in cancer chemotherapy is indeed a possibility.
Jessica Bibliowicz*: Is your expectation that these therapies would go beyond lung cancer and prostate cancer into breast cancer and other forms of cancer? Is that really the expectation you have or are they very targeted?
Johnson: That is very much the hope. This is one of the few approaches one can think of
for the treatment of cancer which has the potential of reaching all forms or many forms. One cannot do clinical trials on all forms of cancers simultaneously, so we have elected to start with lung cancer and prostate cancer, but high on our list, for follow on studies are breast cancer, brain cancer and many others.
*Jessica Bibliowicz, President of John Levin was the guest on CNBC Squack Box
Kernen: You have the benefit of having a very successful drug out there, you've got cash flow, and you've got to be making money. What about everyone else? Isn't everyone going to be buying everyone else to pool the resources? Isn't this ready? I'm surprised this hasn't started in a bigger way? You might be a buyer I guess, instead of a seller?
Peter Johnson: Well, we have no immediate designs on either Glaxo or Smith Kline Beecham or other companies at this moment.....
Kernen: What about that though, aren't we on the verge of a major consolidation in
biotech and major pharmaceuticals?
Johnson: Well one can certainly see a number of fundamentals that would point in that
direction but I have to say that people have been making that prediction for the last fifteen years and throughout the history of biotech and it has yet to emerge as a major trend.
Kernen: It is going to be expensive to develop all these drugs, though, right?
Johnson: Yes but there are some things that happen in young companies that are kept small
and kept in the entrepreneurial spirits that don't necessarily happen elsewhere. A case in point is the very rapid development track that companies like Agouron have been able to execute.
Haines: Mr. Johnson, Thank you very much and I can confidently say that everyone's prayers are with you to succeed.
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