A France-based biopharmaco, with its drug delivery platform and an expanding product pipeline for immuno-compromised patients, confounds sceptics among the life science community.
Delegates attending the BIO-Europe 2004 partnering event in Cologne on 8th-10th November listened attentively to a panel of experts divining the future direction of biotech investment. Meanwhile, ’on the running track’ outside the debating hall, BioAlliance a fleet-footed biopharmaceutical player with its eye on winning gold showed how it had taken over the baton in a relay race to beat drug resistance, seen as a hurdle to be overcome for the effective treatment of immune compromised patients.
Since the phenomenal rise and subsequent fall of biotech in recent years, it has practically become a universal mantra among life science investors to pronounce on the demise of a sector that had been the darling of financial markets in 2000-2001. Markets are driven by stories. In the run-up to the new millennium, ’new age’, high-tech stocks including biotech and IT came into fashion. A feeding frenzy with the herd rushing headlong to pump so much money into high-tech led to a bursting of the bubble that was just as inevitable as night follows day. Irrational exuberance was soon replaced by irrational fear as a ’genomics boom’ failed to generate riches overnight, while publicly quoted biotech companies shed upwards of 95% of their inflated market capitalisation.
At the BIO-Europe 2002 event in Stuttgart, analysts surveying the life science wasteland, gloomily commented it might be a ’blessing in disguise’ or a ’healthy development.’
Small wonder that major investment in biotech, especially in Europe, has not been forthcoming with the VC window firmly shut while a wall of money found its home in asset-backed investments, for example, property or (more recently) cyclicals such as oil and gas. In the current macro-economic climate, the latest excuse for withholding investment, even from some of Europe’s best managed biotechs, is that there’s no exit sign visible from the pay desk.
While the cause of investor sentiment, in particular violent mood swings from mania to depression, cannot in all fairness be laid at the door of biotech players, there’s a kind of rough justice in that only the fittest survive to fight another day. Perhaps, in the not-too-distant future, the 8th-10th November 2004 will in retrospect mark a turning point for the life science sector. This, the 10th Anniversary of BIO-Europe with a record turnout, hosted in the heart of Germany’s North-Rhine Westphalia, generated a wonderful atmosphere of warmth and friendship shared by the International audience and helped enormously by the support of the Washington DC-based BIO, working in co-operation with EBE and the event’s organiser, E.B.D. Group.
In the panel discussion, delegates heard that decisions whether to champion a potential new product would not be based on the possibility of it generating ’blockbuster’ annual revenues of $1 billion. Indeed, personalised medicine for individuals or cohorts of patients could well become the norm.
In conversation with Dr Richard Keatinge (pictured), Business Development Director of Paris-based BioAlliance Pharma, Advances in Life Science learned how this biopharmaco intends to move forward with its combative focus on drug resistance. Typically, patients with unmet medical needs are among those who may be immuno-compromised, for example with HIV infection or cancer or diabetes or the elderly.
BioAlliance Pharma’s team, working together with the Biopharmaceutics department at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Clermont-Ferrand in France have recently demonstrated the potential for a novel drug-delivery formulation to dramatically improve antifungal medication in the oral cavity using their miconazole Lauriad® bioadhesive buccal tablets. This formulation, used once daily, may not just improve patient compliance, but also help to avoid drug interactions and adverse effects in treating oropharyngeal candidiasis. A study has been reported in the well-respected and peer-reviewed British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology (Vol. 58, No. 4: 345-351, 2004).
BioAlliance Pharma’s President and CEO, Dominique Costantini, M.D. has acknowledged that the study of the once-a-day topical formulation of miconazole in the form of an extended release bioadhesive buccal tablet, "played a key role in our decision to proceed with further clinical development of this first product utilizing the Lauriad drug delivery platform."
Keatinge confirmed that the two completed Phase III trials in the EU and a planned Phase III trial in the US are designed to show the superiority of this approach to treating patients with oropharyngeal candidiasis, a fungal infection known as Candida or "thrush" commonly found in immune compromised patients.
BioAlliance’s proprietary bioadhesive buccal tablet (Lauriad®) has been formulated with a natural polymer, used in the food industry, with good tolerance and adhesive properties. When placed on the cuspid fossa beneath the upper lip, it allows the tablet to adhere to the buccal mucosa for an extended period while releasing the antifungal agent. The tablet adheres to the gum and then absorbs water, which triggers sustained release of miconazole and tablet erosion. With the tablet in place, patients can eat, drink and carry on normal daily activities while the tablet dissolves, slowly and / or gradually releasing the drug.
Some key developments at BioAlliance Pharma
The advances shown by the BioAlliance team in Paris may be further evidence of biotechs confounding sceptics sitting on the side-lines while wrong-footing investors in the race to secure healthy returns.
Further details of BioAlliance Pharma’s product pipeline.
Keywords : BIO-Europe 2004 Cologne Biotech Biopharmaceutical Biopharmaco BioAlliance Pharma Paris, France Miconazole Lauriad® Bioadhesive Buccal Drug Delivery Drug Resistance Immune compromised HIV Oropharyngeal candidiasis Thrush Fungal infection
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