BioWorld International Correspondent

LONDON - Avidex Ltd. raised £10 million (US$14.7 million) in a second funding round, enabling it to develop its platform technology for production of stable, soluble T-cell receptor proteins and take its first two products into clinical trials.

The company said its technology will open up the clinical and commercial potential of the cellular immune system, in the same way as monoclonal antibodies opened up its humoral component. It may be applicable to a broad range of diseases, including autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and multiple sclerosis, and to certain cancers.

Avidex also announced the appointment as CEO of James Noble, former finance director of British Biotech plc, where he raised £300 million.

Noble told BioWorld International, "The reason I joined Avidex is the amazing and broad applicability of the technology. People have been trying for years and years and years to make T-cell receptors without succeeding. With the technique we have we can produce them and they are stable for months."

The technology, developed by Avidex founder Bent Jakobsen, allows the T-cell receptor, co-receptor and binding site on diseased cells to be dismantled and modified to create novel protein drugs, to screen for small molecules, target existing drugs and for diagnostics. Jakobsen has left his position at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford to take up the post of chief scientist.

The two lead products, soluble CD8, which locks onto the HLA complex and so prevents the T-cell's CD8 co-receptor from binding to the same site, and Beta2 microglobulin, part of the HLA complex that has been modified by Avidex to block binding to CD8, are expected to be ready for Phase I trials by mid-2002. Both are expected to work as general immune suppressors, and Noble said the company is now selecting the most appropriate disease in which to seek proof of principle.

"It will depend on what the preclinical tests show, and how long they last," he said. "There are many diseases we could look at." The company plans to license these products after Phase I.

Avidex is just getting under way with a program to develop screens to identify small-molecule inhibitors of T-cell protein-protein interactions.

This round of funding was lead by Advent Venture Partners, which invested £4 million. The rest was from private investors and existing shareholders, including Oxford University, which has given Avidex full rights to the intellectual property. Prior to this round, Avidex, based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, had raised £1.7 million.

Noble said the current funding would last until the end of 2002, and he will be looking to raise more next year. "I don't anticipate funding being an issue. We set out this time to raise £7 million and got £10 million.

"This technology has such broad applicability that we will have to choose what we do very carefully. We don't want to end up doing 108 things badly, just four or five things well."

Noble said he is confident that Avidex has a very firm patent position. "One demonstration of this is that scientists have applied to join the company from all over the world because people in the field know this is the one place they can work with the technology." The company currently employs 17 and this is expected to increase to 30 during 2001.