Media Articles

Merrion to add GIPET® to H-F's Neuroprotectant

July 18, 2006 - Pharma Marketletter

Hunter-Fleming, a UK-based biopharmaceutical company focused on neurological and cardiac disorders, has commenced an oral drug-delivery research collaboration with the USA's Merrion Pharmaceuticals. The two companies intend to combine Hunter-Fleming's drug candidate, HF0420, which has demonstrated neuroprotective and neurotrophic activity in vivo, with Merrion's Gastrointestinal Permeation Enhancement Technology (GIPET®) delivery platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.

HF0420 is an orally-active compound, which has completed Phase Ia studies, that is expected to improve behavioral deficits in the elderly. The firms hope that Merrion's GIPET® will improve the agent's oral bioavailability ahead of Phase II trials in 2007.

According to Merrion, in 16 clinical studies GIPET has been shown to improve the bioavailability of a wide range of drugs by between 500% and 1,400%. Merrion currently has four in-house development programs, as well as several collaboration agreements, underway using GIPET®.

HF0420 is a specific mixture of oligosaccharides, as a treatment to prevent, slow or halt the progression of neurodegenerative conditions. H-F noted that, at clinically-relevant doses, the agent lacks any significant anticoagulant activity and, more importantly, has been shown to protect neurons in three different industry-standard preclinical animal models of cell death, independent of the type of insult. Complementary to its general neuroprotective effect, HF0420 has a neurotrophic action, increasing the dendritic branching of cells in the CA1 layer of the hippocampus in vivo and restoring neurotransmission between the CA3 and CA1 regions of the hippocampus in vitro, which supports applications for the product in a broad range of neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders, as well as for the repair of brain and spinal cord injury.


<< back to media articles