TheraPharm already has a diagnostic imaging product approved in Europe and marketed as Scintimun targeting white blood cells, for the purpose of locating areas of infection in patients with suspected bone infection.
The deal provides Telix with access to a portfolio of patents, technologies, production systems, clinical data and know-how in in the use of molecularly targeted radiation in haematology and immunology. MTR drugs deliver targeted radiation to a patient. This is an injection, with a homing beacon attached to the radioactive drug. It finds the cancer cells and attaches itself and kills them. This allows it to selectively attack this area.
Telix plans to pursue its first non oncology indication in TheraPharm’s drug candidate, 90Y-anti-CD66-MTR, which has demonstrated promising initial safety and efficacy data in systemic amyloid lightchain amyloidosis. SALA is a rare but serious protein deposition disease, caused by a protein known as an amyloid that is produced by abnormal plasma cells residing in the bone marrow. Protein deposition and formation of amyloids are associated with several neurodegenerative diseases.
There are about 30,000 and 45,000 people suffering from SALA in the United States and Europe respectively. It has a median survival rate from diagnosis of about 11 months if untreated.
Telix chief executive Christian Behrenbruch said the acquisition of TheraPharm and its MTR assets were uniquely aligned to Telix’s mission and technical strengths in antibody engineering and radiochemistry.
“TheraPharm technology has a significant role to play in BMC [bone marrow conditioning] and stem cell transplantation across a broad range of blood cancers and rare diseases,” Dr Behrenhruch said. “MTR offers an excellent safety profile that may greatly expand the number of patients able to undergo life prolonging stem cell transplantation while greatly reducing the hospitalisation burden and cost associated with such procedures. “The current approach to BMC employs highly toxic drugs that have a poor morbidity and mortality profile, and for which many patients are ineligible.”
Telix said the TheraPharm technology had potentially a very broad application in the diagnosis and treatment of haematologic diseases (like blood cancers), infection management and a variety of lymphoproliferative diseases. For example, B cell lymphoproliferative disorders are conditions in the blood involving uncontrolled growth of white blood cells, including cancers as multiple myeloma, Hodgkin lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.
Dr Behrenhruch said of particular interest was the demonstrated use of the technology to safely and effectively condition patients prior to bone marrow stem cell transplant.
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