next target: the common cold
infobeat.com
12:06 PM ET 05/28/98
FEATURE-Australian firm sneezes at common cold
By Mark Bendeich
MELBOURNE, Australia (Reuters) - A small Australian company
hopes to do what only quacks have done down the centuries --
peddle a ''cure'' for the common cold.
But unlike history's promoters of vile potions and elixirs,
Biota Holdings is being taken seriously. Biota, in partnership
with British drugs giant Glaxo Wellcome, has already developed a
''cure'' for influenza after 14 years of research.
The drug Relenza is expected to be commercially released
first in Australia next year. In trials it was shown not only to
vaccinate against flu but kill the virus after infection.
Biota now has the common cold in its sights.
''You would have to say their credentials in the area are
very, very good,'' said industry analyst Gerard Eakin, of
investment bank Merrill Lynch. ''If anyone has got a decent
chance, these guys do. I think they definitely have carry-over
credibility from their flu work to this work (a cold cure).''
Biota, using research carried out by Australia's chief
scientific research agency and the Melbourne-based Victorian
College of Pharmacy, sneezed at convention in its flu work.
Rather than bombarding the flu virus with an arsenal of heavy
weapons, its scientists searched for any chinks in its armor.
In the 1980s, they found one. All strains of flu showed a
similar basic structure with a cleft on the surface, said Biota
chief executive Hugh Niall, an Australian scientist who has
swapped his lab coat for a suit.
FITS LIKE KEY INTO LOCK
''The scientists were able to design something that fits
like a key into a lock and jams that part of the virus. The
virus needs that particular part of its structure to spread
within the lung so once that's jammed all it can do is die. It
effectively kills it,'' he said.
''In that sense it cures the flu, but depending on how sick
you are it takes some time for the body to recover,'' he added.
Relenza comes in the form of a powder and is inhaled using a
pocket-sized puffer device. It can be taken as a vaccine or used
after flu symptoms appear. The later the drug is taken after
infection the longer the symptoms take to vanish -- from five
minutes to three days.
''If I have the flu and I cough on you now and you catch it
from me in the next five minutes and you take the drug, you will
not catch flu,'' Niall said.
The flu is said to be the sixth-largest killer of Americans
and account for three times as many deaths as AIDS. Up to 30
percent of the world's population catches it each year.
Merrill's Eakin estimates Relenza could generate revenues of
$1 billion -- mostly for Glaxo Wellcome -- after 2000. The
Australian company, which left much of the development costs to
Glaxo Wellcome, takes seven percent of the revenues.
Glaxo Wellcome aims to file for approvals for Relenza in
about 15 nations, including the United States, by the end of
this year, Biota's Niall said. ''We think the potential market
is very large,'' he said.
If a flu-killing drug is big business, a drug that kills the
stubborn bug behind the common cold -- rhinovirus -- would
really make mouths water in the pharmaceutical industry. Unlike
the flu, which hits seven to 10 percent of people in a normal
winter and up to 30 percent in an epidemic, the common cold
spares almost no one.
''One hundred percent of people pretty much get at least one
and probably more like three or four colds in the course of a
year,'' Niall said. Rhinovirus accounts for between 10 and 40
percent of all colds.
''There's a long way to go (on the rhinovirus), but we have
come up with compounds that are definitely able to kill the
virus in a test tube,'' Niall said.
FROM COUGH MIXTURE TO CLEVER SCIENCE
Merrill's Eakin said Biota hoped to test an anti-rhinovirus
drug on animals in about a year. ''If they did that, that would
be significant, but it's still experimental science,'' he said.
Biota plans to use revenues from Relenza, its first drug, to
help fund more of its own development work, but a common-cold
drug, like the influenza cure, would need massive trials
requiring the financial support of a drug company.
A company employing just 15 permanent staff, Biota has yet
to show a profit after 14 years on the Australian Stock
Exchange. But its share price has been on a roller-coaster and
at times Biota worried its investors were getting too excited
about the progress of its flu work.
Biota is also working on drugs to combat cancer and
Alzheimer's disease. But for founding investor Alan Woods its
work on the flu and common cold are closest to his heart.
Woods' grandfather was the creator of ''Woods Great
Peppermint Cure'' cough mixture, one of the many brews offered
to flu and cold sufferers from the late 1890s.
''It was an exciting venture for us,'' he told Reuters of
his initial investment. ''Given the family association, I felt
strongly that I wanted to be associated with it.''
^REUTERS@ |
