PharmaTelevision - Alchemia: Drug Discovery with a Difference

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Video title: Alchemia: Drug Discovery with a Difference

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Company

In this exclusive interview, Fintan Walton talks to Pete Smith, CEO of Alchemia, about the origins of the company in carbohydrate chemistry, and how these origins led to a unique position in the manufacture of fondaparinux through an agreement with Dr Reddy’s. Pete also outlines the hyaluronic acid technology gained through the acquisition of Meditech, and how the company is using this in oncology. Alchemia’s strategic positioning as a drug discovery company that blends rational drug design with random high throughput screening is also discussed.

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Origins of the company

Fintan Walton:

Hello and welcome to PharmaVentures Business Review here in Brisbane in Australia. On this show I have Pete Smith, who is the CEO of Alchemia based here in Australia, welcome to the show Pete.

Peter Smith:

Thank you very much indeed.

Fintan Walton:

Alchemia is a company that was founded in 1995 it was listed on the ASX in 2003. It's a company with origins of carbohydrate chemistry, how has the company evolved since 1995?

Peter Smith:

Well it was originally founded to exploit particularly chemistry capability and that is really the holy grail of carbohydrate chemistry the ability to take a carbohydrate ring and basically chemically put what we want, where we want on that ring and we were able to do that at scale. And the origins of the company is really to take that ability and create nice three dimensional drug like molecules and build rational libraries which move typical binding elements like the positive charges negative charges lipophilic 00:01:19 groups , amidic groups into different positions in three dimensional space so basically you know taking lock and key analogy to build a library of lots of keys that would be highly likely to fit a lock.

Fintan Walton:

So the competence was in the chemistry basis and obviously was a drug discovery company?

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Fintan Walton

Dr Walton is the Founder and CEO of PharmaTelevision. After completing his doctoral research on the genetics of cell proliferation at the University of Michigan (US) and Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland), Dr Walton gained broad commercial experience in biotechnology in management positions at Bass and Celltech plc (1982-1992).

Peter Smith

CEO of Alchemia

Peter Smith joined Alchemia in 2006 as Director of Commercialization, and became CEO in April 2007. Peter Smith has more than 18 years of commercial experience in the biotechnology-pharmaceutical sector. Before joining Alchemia, Peter was CEO and Managing Director of Amrad from 2003 to 2005, where he successfully created the spin-out anti-infectives company Avexa, and restructured Amrad to focus on antibody therapeutics, renaming it Zenyth Therapeutics in the process. Zenyth went on to be acquired by CSL in 2006. Previously Peter founded UK biotech company Onyvax, and was a top-rated pharmaceutical analyst at the UK and Swiss Investment Banks HSBC and UBS. Peter holds a PhD in Biochemistry and a BA from Cambridge University in the UK.

PharmaVentures

PharmaVentures is a corporate finance and transactions advisory firm that has served hundreds of clients worldwide in relation to their strategic deal making in the pharmaceutical, life science and healthcare sectors. Our key offerings include: Transactions / deal negotiations; Product / technology valuations; Deal term advice; Due diligence & expert reports; Strategy formulation; Alliance management; and Expert opinion for litigation/arbitration cases. PharmaVentures provides the global expertise to ensure our clients generate the highest possible return on investment from all their deal making activities. We have experience of all therapeutic areas and can offer advice on both product and technology commercialization.

Alchemia

Alchemia is a listed Australian biotechnology company. It has particular expertise in chemistry, which it has applied to the discovery and development of human therapeutic products. Since it was founded in 1995, Alchemia has grown into an established drug discovery and development company driving value through its antithrombotic drug genericfondaparinux and its dual platform technologies.