Drug link-up offers hope
Release Date: 2009-03-24
GlaxoSmithKline is to collaborate with a group of scientists to produce an effective treatment for amyloidosis – a disease that causes organ failure in hundreds of people in the UKSufferers from amyloidosis, which causes organ failure in hundreds of people a year in Britain, can look forward to the first effective treatment for their disease, following a deal announced on Tuesday between University College London and GlaxoSmithKline.
GSK will collaborate with a UCL team led by Mark Pepys, professor of medicine, to produce an antibody-based drug. Prof Pepys has focused his research efforts on the disease for more than 30 years.
Although details of the agreement are confidential, he said GSK would spend “many millions” of pounds working with UCL scientists to convert their successful animal test results into a medicine for human use.
Mike Owen, GSK’s head of biopharmaceutical research, said it was realistic to aim for clinical trials within two years.
Amyloidosis is caused by the build-up of abnormal “amyloid” proteins in body tissues. Symptoms are very variable because the heart, kidneys, liver and almost any other organ can be affected. Every year 500 to 1,000 new cases are diagnosed in the UK, mainly in middle-aged and older people; their prognosis is poor.
The new treatment will boost the effectiveness of a drug called CPHPC, which Prof Pepys developed in the 1990s to remove amyloid deposits from patients. “While we had promising early results [with CPHPC] they were not enough to benefit patients with advanced disease,” he said. “Something more dramatic is needed.”
That something is a combination of CPHPC with an antibody – a molecular guidance system designed to seek out amyloid deposits in vital organs. The GSK collaboration aims to “humanise” the drug-antibody combination, which has given spectacular results in mice.
Although amyloidosis is a rare disease, there are enough sufferers – an estimated 80,000 in the industrialised world – to bring in considerable revenues from an effective drug.
| Type: | NORMAL |
| Url: | http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d778a770-17ff-11de-8c9d-0000779fd2ac.html?ftcamp=rss |