BioWorld International Correspondent

PARIS - Innate Pharma SAS, which is due to announce Oct. 19 that it plans to launch an initial public offering on the Paris stock exchange, has selected a new drug candidate for preclinical and pharmaceutical development.

The Marseille, France-based company is developing new classes of drug candidates targeting the innate immune system and is focusing primarily on cancer, but the new compound, IPH 1201, is an immune modulator being developed for chronic viral infections, making it the first drug candidate the company has selected outside the field of oncology.

IPH 1201 belongs to the family of gamma9-delta2 agonists, and its pharmacological properties are similar to those of Innate's lead compound, IPH 1101, which is in Phase II trials for metastatic renal carcinoma (mRCC). However, the company indicates that IPH 1201's pharmacokinetics and ADME (absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion) properties make it more suitable for development outside oncology.

Innate's chief scientific officer, François Romagné, said "immune modulators targeting innate immunity may open new perspectives in the treatment of chronic viral infections resistant to conventional therapy, and may eventually be positioned as alternatives to injected drugs such as interferons."

He added that a clinical trial of IPH 1101 in the indication of HCV would be initiated in 2007, with the drug to be administered intravenously. If successful, it "could provide the green light for the clinical development of IPH 1201 from 2008 in this indication, and possibly in other viral infections."

The Phase II trial of IPH 1101 in mRCC, the indication for which it was granted orphan-drug status by the European Medicines Evaluation Agency in 2004, is being conducted in France, Russia and Ukraine.

Clinical data are expected to be available by the end of 2007. The drug earlier completed a successful Phase I trial in mRCC, as well as one in solid tumors, while a third Phase I is under way in the indication of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Innate Pharma announced plans for an IPO several months ago, and to that end filed a "document de base," or preliminary prospectus, with the French Financial Markets Authority in June. But it said at the time that it would wait for equity market conditions to improve before going ahead with the share offering.