Even as stock markets seem to be taking a continued battering, the financial market for biotech companies (despite some horrible recent headlines) seems to remain in pretty good health, with the sector as a whole seeing increasing profitability.

One of our opportunities as the operator of the NBC is to see many of the concepts for new medicines in development. In the last few months we have come across some really exciting new therapies and vaccines which encourage us that the biotech industry also has a bright future.


CAT/AZ
Big Pharma has shown renewed interest in biotech recently, culminating in the announcement that Cambridge Antibody Technology has accepted a strategic £567m takeover bid from AstraZeneca. The deal follows the successful co development relationship established in 2004. The announcement came just one week before Cambridge Antibody announced first half profits attributed to royalty payments for its Humira rheumatoid arthritis drug.

By contrast, this month AstraZeneca abandoned studies of its diabetes drug Galida (tesaglitazar), which was already in Phase III trials, and patent expiries loom opening AstraZeneca to generic competition.

Biogenerics approvals
On the subject of generic competition, since the last newsletter we have seen the EMEA give regulatory approval to the first two biogeneric drugs for marketing within the European Union. The Sandoz HGH Omnitrope, followed by Swiss biopharm’s, BioPartners’ Valtropin have become the first biosimilars to be given the green light. Both drugs are based on Somatropin, a recombinant DNA growth hormone and will compete on the European market with products sold by Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Genentech and Serono.

Flotation of Renovo
Renovo Group plc, the biopharmaceutical product company developing drugs to prevent and reduce scarring in the skin has floated with an Initial Public Offering “IPO” of 87p per share. The gross proceeds of the Global Offer are approximately £50 million.

Stock market improvements for biotech in general
While Stock Markets generally have been taking a battering, biotech stock has been a bull market. This has been aided by research and development of vaccines against the various Avian Flu forms, and the increasing profitability of the biotech sector.

Indeed, Avian flu has been making an impact again as just in the last two weeks, the first suspected cases of general human to human transmission of the H5N1 avian flu virus have been recorded in Indonesia, with Generex, Novavax and Peregrin etc. all benefiting from immediate boosts in share prices. This accompanied by the announcements of the first European biogenerics getting the go ahead (see above), and the launch of new drugs such as Onyx’s Nexavar (kidney cancer drug) has led to excellent first quarter results.



Last month we were delighted to announce another GMP manufacturing contract, this time for Onyvax Ltd to support their new Ovarian Cancer program. Meanwhile work on client projects is fully underway in the process development labs.

Crawford Brown, Eden’s CEO, has recently visited Japan where over 80 representatives from Pharmaceutical and Biotech companies gathered to hear him present on biotech development challenges at the British Embassy in Tokyo. With time for translation his presentation took nearly two hours! I’m not sure which deserves the most sympathy – the audience or the speaker!



Dr Crawford Brown (Chief Executive Officer) and Dr Derek Ellison (Business Development Director). Read their impressions of Chicago and BIO2006 in Review (see left column).

We are also very pleased that the Eden team keeps on growing. In the last few weeks we have had new starters in just about all areas of the business. Kate Westwell has joined from Chiron Vaccines as Microbiologist and Mandy Shipman has joined us from Cobra Biomanufacturing as Project Manager, adding to Tamara Tugal who joined us as Business Development Manager.


Following the successful market approvals of biosimilars granted to Biopartners and Sandoz, Eden recently completed a market research exercise on industry attitudes to biosimilars (biogenerics) in general. Some of the results were surprising. For example…

	Following the first approvals of Biogenerics, future expiring patents are generally viewed as an opportunity and not a threat by the majority of European biotechs.
	Western biotechs still remain more skeptical about the market potential of biosimilars than their Asian counterparts, but this accompanies a marked difference in opinion of the scope of the expanding market as a whole.
	The USA lags behind Europe in facing up to reality of biosimilars.