PolyTherics and Celtic Pharma sign agreement to explore technologies for improved drug performance

Feb 26 2008

PolyTherics Limited, a biopharmaceutical spin-out company from Imperial College London and the London School of Pharmacy, and Celtic Pharma Development Services Bermuda Ltd, a subsidiary of Celtic Pharmaceutical Holdings LP, a global private equity investment fund focused on the biopharma industry, today announced that they have entered into a broad research collaboration agreement.

Under the terms of the agreement, PolyTherics’ proprietary drug modification technologies will be used to enhance certain of the innovative pharmaceutical products being developed by Celtic Pharma.

The parties plan jointly to develop and validate modifications of drugs submitted to the collaboration by Celtic Pharma, in order to improve their performance and assess their future development potential.

PolyTherics has substantial expertise in the targeted and selective modification of compounds for therapeutic and diagnostic application. Through the application of a platform of polymer-based technologies, it is developing compounds as drug candidates in both existing and emerging markets. With the growing commercial impact of biopharmaceutical products, and particularly next generation antibody fragments, PolyTherics is strongly positioned to address these opportunities. PolyTherics has revenue-generating research and development contracts in place with several companies and is in discussion with a number of others.

Dr Keith Powell, Chief Executive Officer of PolyTherics, said: “We view collaboration through partnership as fundamental to exemplifying the development potential of our proprietary technologies and fulfilling our strategy. The opportunity to collaborate with a high calibre, product-focused company such as Celtic Pharma is a significant milestone in the development of PolyTherics, and we are delighted to be working with Celtic Pharma on several of the products in their portfolio. We believe that our work together will show that PolyTherics’ proprietary technologies can be used to improve pharmaceutical products to increase their commercial value.”

Celtic Pharma currently has a portfolio of nine novel pharmaceutical products in clinical development across a range of therapeutic areas. Each product is being developed to address important unmet medical needs, and Celtic Pharma aims to move these products rapidly and effectively through clinical development to regulatory approval.

Dr Bill Henry, Managing Director - Global Head of CMC at Celtic Pharma, said: “We are excited about accessing the technology capability of PolyTherics through collaboration and exploring its potential impact on our product pipeline.”

www.polytherics.co.uk and www.celticpharma.com