Agreements with Imperial College & Oxford Uni

RNS Number : 8790E

ValiRx PLC

14 April 2011

 

14 April 2011

ValiRx Plc

("ValiRx" or the "Company")

 Agreements with Imperial College and Oxford University

ValiRx, a life science company with a focus on cancer diagnostics and therapeutics for personalised medicine, announces that it has signed agreements with Imperial College and Oxford University to accelerate the development of its lead therapeutics VAL101 and VAL 201.

Imperial College will carry out the late preclinical development of VAL101 with funding from the Eurostars scheme. The aim is to provide validation for the GeneICE clinical applications and validation for the use of GeneICE technology as a silencing tool, in which "rebellious genes", which cause problems such as cancer and some neurological problems, are shut down or "put on ice".  ValiRx hopes that this will enable VAL101 to compete in the rapidly growing market space for epigenomics therapeutics and personalised medicine.  Among other opportunities, it is hoped that the data package will address a specific data "wish list" provided to ValiRx by a leading global provider to the life science community, and that it will provide discovery and development tools and biomarkers for biopharmaceutical companies in their development of potential companion diagnostic products.

The collaboration with Oxford University will look at late preclinical development of VAL201 to combat hormone refractory prostate cancer and also further indications of hormone induced unregulated growth. These conditions have a significant unmet clinical need and, if the collaboration is successful, VAL201 will have a large impact on the personalised therapeutic approach to oncology and unregulated growth.

Imperial College and Oxford University are amongst the world's most prestigious institutions to be carrying out drug development of this type. Further work will be carried out to support the regulatory requirements prior to entering clinical trials. 

All intellectual and commercial property rights from the work undertaken by both Oxford University and Imperial College will continue to be owned by ValiRx.

Dr Satu Vainikka, CEO of ValiRx plc, commented:

"I am delighted that we have reached agreement with two such prestigious institutions whose research work is reputed to be of the highest standard. I look forward to ValiRx benefiting greatly from this association and for the future successful progress and development of our therapeutic medicines."

For more information, please contact:

ValiRx plc	Tel: [phone]
Dr. Satu Vainikka
www.valirx.com
Cairn Financial Advisers LLP	Tel: [phone]
Nominated Adviser
Liam Murray / Avi Robinson
Hybridan LLP	Tel: [phone]
Broker
Claire Noyce
Peckwater PR
Tarquin Edwards	Tel: [phone]
	[e-mail]

Notes for Editors

ValiRx Plc

ValiRx Plc is a biopharmaceutical company developing novel technologies and products in oncology therapeutics and diagnostics. The product focus is in the epigenomic analysis and treatment of cancer, but the technologies can be applied to other fields as well, such as neurology and inflammatory diseases.

The Company listed on AIM in October 2006 and is creating a portfolio of innovative products through investment in specific development projects. It actively manages projects within this portfolio as a trading company and is not an investment vehicle. The ValiRx business model spreads the risks of life science technology developments by minimising financial exposure and running a set of projects to defined commercial endpoints. This maximises returns to shareholders by adding value at the earlier stages where value increases per investment unit are the greatest. 

The Company operates through the following divisional companies:

·      ValiMedix is the sales and distribution division of ValiRx

·      ValiPharma is the therapeutics division with two embedded technologies primarily directed at the treatment of cancers. Of particular note is GeneICE, ValiRx's technology for controlling rebellious genes, which was awarded a Eurostars grant to the value of €1.2 million to fund the development of the GeneICE products through preclinical stages in cancer treatments.  ValiRx is leading a consortium of biotechnology companies that are completing pre-clinical studies based on ValiRx's GeneIce technology platform, prior to entering clinical trials.

Background to GeneICE & Eurostars

In June 2009, ValiRx, as the leading partner of an international consortium of three companies, was awarded a two year grant by Eurostar against substantial competition from across Europe, to develop its GeneICE technology ("GeneICE" or "Gene inactivation by chromatin engineering"), in which "rebellious genes", which cause problems such as cancer and potentially some neurological problems, are shut down or "put on ice". 

The Eurostars programme is a EU grant scheme and EUrEKa Network initiative, created with the purpose of providing funding for market-oriented research and development activities by Small and Medium-sized Enterprises within the EU.

ValiRx successfully led the funding application with GenoSyst (Finland) and PentaBase (Denmark) under the 2nd call to the Eurostars joint Programme, for design optimisation, lead selection and pre-clinical testing of GeneICE.  The application was rated second in the UK and Finland and first in Denmark, coming in 4th overall out of over 500 applicants within the EU wide scheme. 

The technology is under license from Imperial College, University of London and it has been shown to be effective against several cancer cell lines, including prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer and lung cancer.  ValiRx retains all commercial rights for GeneICE from the programme.

The GeneICE development plan has four principal goals:

1.   Identification of specific genomic DNA sequences associated with proven cancer targets

2.   Design and optimisation of the anti-gene system to silence the aberrant genes

3.   Evaluation of desired and potential off-target effects

4.   Pre-clinical development of an optimised lead therapeutic against a selected target

 

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