BioWorld International Correspondent
LONDON - KuDOS Ltd. was acquired by AstraZeneca plc for £121.5 million (US$210 million) in cash, rounding off the most successful month in the history of the UK biotech industry, with five deals totaling more than $1.3 billion announced in December.
Privately held KuDOS had raised £42.5 million since it was spun out of Cambridge University in 1997 to commercialize research on DNA damage sensing and signaling. The company has three products in Phase I and Phase II trials in a number of cancer indications and a preclinical anti-retroviral product. KuDOS says its technologies also can be applied to develop safer immunosuppressive drugs.
Most recently, Cambridge-based KuDOS raised £30 million in September 2002 in an oversubscribed round that was led by Euclid SR Partners with Johnson & Johnson Development Corp., LSP-Life Science Partners and BankInvest Biomedical Venture.
The existing UK investors Advent Venture Partners, Schroder Ventures Life Sciences and 3i Group plc made follow-on investments. Cambridge University and the founding scientist Stephen Jackson also have stakes. The company raised £5 million in May 1999 and £8 million in August 2001.
London-based AstraZeneca figured in another of December's large deals, agreeing to license Protherics plc's CytoFab antibody treatment for sepsis, for up to £195 million. The other UK deals were PIramed Ltd, in Slough, UK, and Genentech Inc., in South San Francisco, signing an agreement worth £133 million for preclinical cell-cycle inhibitors; Cambridge, UK-based Astex Ltd.'s $520 million agreement with Novartis AG, of Basel, Switzerland, for a portfolio of small-molecule anticancer drugs; and UK-based GW Pharmaceuticals plc's £43 million European marketing agreement with Almirall SA, of Barcelona, Spain, for Sativex, a cannabis-based treatment for multiple sclerosis.
KuDOS specializes in small-molecule inhibitors of DNA repair enzymes. Inhibiting repair mechanisms enhances the sensitivity of tumors to chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and the inhibitors possess anticancer activity in their own right.
The lead compound is PaTrin-2, which is in Phase II trials in metastatic melanoma and advanced colorectal cancer, in combination with chemotherapy.
The second product, AQ4N, or banoxanthrone, is a prodrug of a cytotoxin that is activated only in the hypoxic fractions of solid tumors. Hypoxia is a major cause of resistance of solid tumors to radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
In July, the company's in-house product KU 59436, an oral PARP (polyADP ribose polymerase) inhibitor, entered Phase I trials. PARP inhibitors are selectively cytotoxic to inherited breast and ovarian cancers that are BRCA1 and 2 deficient, and a wider range of BRCA-deficient tumors.
AstraZeneca is interested in the PARP inhibitors because it is possible to test for the BRCA mutations, opening up the possibility of developing KU 59436 as a monotherapy in a definable patient population.
KuDOS has 75 staff based at two sites. AstraZeneca will retain those sites and develop KuDOS as its hub for DNA repair discovery activities.
It is one of four deals by AstraZeneca announced in December as the company's new CEO, David Brennan, takes control. Brennan has promised to focus on strengthening the company's pipeline.
The other deals were with Targacept Inc., for a Phase II cognitive disorder drug, AtheroGenics Inc., for AGI-1067 for treating arteriosclerosis.