If e-Therapeutics has its way, the last frontiers of therapeutic medicine are
about to fall – The treatment of complex, intractable or poorly treated disease
remains one of the richest sources of un-mined blockbuster areas of modern
therapeutic medicine. e-Therapeutics’ predictive drug discovery platform is
aimed at providing a solution.
Drug development failure rates remain high despite advances in biology –
Only 2-3% of drugs identified as therapeutically relevant eventually make it
to market. e-Therapeutics’ drug discovery technology is aimed at identifying
drugs that circumvent the uncertainties of drug development by identifying
drug candidates that offer efficacy and safety.
Identification of low-redundancy targets with minimal extraneous interactions
are the key – e-Therapeutics uses powerful computers, integrated databases
and sophisticated scientific approaches to overcome the pitfalls of searching
for a ‘needle in a haystack’ in large, complex, ‘noisy’ data systems. The result is
a ‘predictive’ system that looks for drugs that avoid ‘leakiness’ in efficacy and
tolerance/side-effect interactions with healthy pathways and tissues.
The current focus is on re-positioned compounds – e-Therapeutics has opted
to focus first on re-positioning drugs developed for other applications. This
represents the ‘low hanging fruit’ for this technology as it throws up drugs with
full regulatory monographs and therefore much shorter development times.
Clinical validation and the road to glory – As with all highly innovative
pharma development science, the proof of the pudding remains successful
clinical trials that are confirmatory of the predictions of the system. In the
end, only clinical outcomes that match the predictions of the system in both
efficacy and safety will give this approach the credibility that is needed for
e‑Therapeutics to become a perceived ‘player’ in the pharma discovery game.
First ‘Proof of Principle’ trials should give early indications – The small PoP
asthma and depression trials should provide some early insights as to safety
and some indication as to whether the predicted efficacy parameters are
confirmed. The trials are not statistically powered for efficacy but should give
sufficient data to feed into potential licensees.
Valuation is indicative and preliminary only – The valuation work presented
here is illustrative in nature. But, should the clinical outcomes match the
predictions, what is now highly speculative could rapidly transition into
a goldmine of opportunity. Investors, watch this space!
