Article Excerpt:
TWST: What is Dynavax Technologies?Dr. Dina: Dynavax is a company dedicated to developing technology based on TLR-9 agonists. These are activators of the immune system that act upon a specific receptor to enhance immune response in a very potent and specific way. The company has two programs in late-stage development going toward filing in the 2008 time frame. Both include large-scale clinical studies - one is the therapy for ragweed allergies and the other one is an improved, highly effective hepatitis B vaccine. Beyond that, the company has set up a very large pipeline of products that are at earlier stages. The cancer program is in Phase II, with an intervention in follicular lymphoma in conjunction with Rituximab. There are also two other earlier indications in cancer and two viral interventions - one for chronic hepatitis B and one for chronic hepatitis C. In addition, we have a vaccine program in collaboration with NIH: one for universal flu vaccine and one for an improved anthrax vaccine. Taking into account the collaboration we have with AstraZeneca in asthma and COPD, we have 10 major indications underway, eight of which are externally funded through various mechanisms. The company was founded 10 years ago by Eyal Raz and Dennis Carson at the University of California, San Diego. We started operating in this current configuration, with me and a group of people who left Chiron in the 1997 or 1998 time frame here in Berkeley; we have been operating over the past eight years in our current location.
TWST: What are the priorities for the next 12 months? What would make that time
frame a success?
Dr. Dina: Our key priority is to develop our two leading products, TOLAMBA for
ragweed and HEPLISAV for hepatitis B, into fully organized franchises and
businesses. Clearly, if you look at the company with its 150 people, we can
sustain momentum in 10 indications with the current funding. However, we feel
strongly that we need to selectively support these efforts with strategic
alliances that align us with the right partners to help commercialize and market
the products.
For example, in the case of the allergy program, ragweed is just one of the
allergens that can be used to treat allergies, but we have very good and solid
pre-clinical data showing that we can do the same thing with peanut allergies.
As you may know, the peanut allergies are potentially lethal, and there is
absolutely nothing that people can do to treat them except carry an epinephrine
pen in case they suffer a sudden attack and go into anaphylaxis.
We believe we can address this major medical need. We just need to find the
right level of funding and critical mass to be able to do that. The same is true
for cat allergies and cedar allergies and so on, where the technology has shown
remarkable translatability; the actual technology risk for the new indications
is greatly reduced as compared to where we were five years ago.
The same is true with vaccines where hepatitis B is our prototype. We believe we
could very rapidly bring to completion a flu program that is based on the use of
the current vaccine supplement that was in variant antigens of flu. That would
include the totally normal properties, including the ability to actually protect
people from a pandemic strain. That's currently funded by NIH, but it would be
much more rapid and effective in the context of a vaccine franchise if we were
able to establish an alliance with a key vaccine company to move this forward.
So we are working very hard on strategic initiatives to make all of these
possible and translate all of these indications into actual business
propositions.
Tickers included in this excerpt: DVAX
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