Mr. Hart: Our lead drug is RSR13, a synthetic allosteric modifier of hemoglobin. The drug is being developed as a radiation sensitizer and is currently in Phase III. The status of the Phase III is that we are in excess of 80% enrolled in a 500-patient trial, and we would expect that enrollment to be complete in the second half of this year. This timeline would put us filing our NDA in the third quarter of 2003 and, hopefully, with a positive vote, marketing the drug in the middle part of 2004. In February we completed the in-licensing of a new compound, BGP-15, for which we intend to file an IND as quickly as we can ' hopefully, by the end of the year. It's a novel oral drug that we intend to develop as a chemoprotectant capable of reducing or eliminating the need for expensive supportive care therapy.
TWST: Why was that available to you?
Mr. Hart: We made a decision early on to focus on the clinical
development and commercialization of RSR13 and other products. As
such, we're not a platform company, and in terms of research and
development we don't invest a lot of money into just pure
research. We intend to fill our pipeline by investing in other
in-licensing candidates. The in-license of this new drug, BGP-15,
was something that we worked on for quite some time. It was in-
licensed from a company called N-Gene Research Laboratories,
headquartered in New York but with a quite substantial chemistry
operation in Budapest, Hungary. We came across this opportunity
just through various contacts that we have in the industry.
Tickers included in this excerpt: ALTH
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.