PharmaTelevision - Biotica’s Balancing Act

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Video title: Biotica’s Balancing Act

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Since 1996, when Biotica was spun out of Cambridge University, the company has been developing a pipeline of lead optimised polyketides focused on unmet clinical needs. In January 2009 they announced a deal with GlaxoSmithKline, an upfront cash payment and equity investment that has left the company in a strong position for the coming year. As Melanie McCullagh, Director of Business Development, explains in this interview the company’s broad range of different opportunities means they have to carefully balance their internal expertise with external demand.

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The origin of Biotica and its pipeline.

Fintan Walton:

Hello and welcome to PharmaVentures Business review here at BioTrinity in Oxford. On this show I've Melanie McCullagh who is Director of Business Development in a company called Biotica based in Cambridge. Welcome to the show.

Melanie McCullagh:

Thank you.

Fintan Walton:

Melanie McCullagh, Biotica is a company that has a history that goes back into the mid 1990%27s. It's a business that's probably spun out of the University of Cambridge. It specializes in molecules that are derived from bacteria, which are of potential therapeutic use. Just tell us a little bit about the history and how Biotica came about?

Melanie McCullagh:

The Biotica was founded by two Cambridge academics, Professors Peter Leadlay and Jim Staunton. Peter Leadlay is still at the company as a Non-Executive Director. They had a lot of expertise in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of polyketides, as you mentioned which are very naturally bio active molecules. So they founded the company in '96. It went on to grow as joint venture Capital funding and we've expanded the company into building a pipeline of lead optimized polyketidestherapeutics.

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Melanie McCullagh

Business Development Director

Melanie McCullagh joined Biotica as Business Development Director in April 2008. She was previously at Antisoma where she was instrumental in the 2007 licensing of Melanie McCullagh, Director of Business Development of Biotica, expects a good news to be come out from Biotica in next few years ASA-404 to Novartis in a deal worth $890m, and was involved in establishing the Roche collaboration in 2002. She was also responsible for bringing new investigational cancer drugs into the company through in-licensing and collaborations, and for company strategic analysis. Prior to Antisoma, Melanie McCullagh led the Strategy Analysis group in Datamonitor Healthcare, providing insight to leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients into areas such as forecasting, licensing, M&A and portfolio management. Melanie McCullagh has an MA from Cambridge University, a DPhil from Oxford University and an MBA from London Business School.

Biotica

Biotica, is a development stage drug discovery company with a broad pipeline of therapeutic programmes, all based on their proprietary polyketide bio-engineering technology. Biotica's distinctive drug discovery platform generates improved derivatives of important drugs that are inaccessible by medicinal chemistry. In particular, the Company rationally engineers the class of natural products known as polyketides. Many clinically and commercially valuable pharmaceuticals are polyketides, including the anti- cholesterol drugs Mevacor, Pravachol and Zocor, the anti- cancer drugs Torisel and Ixempra, and the immunosuppressants Rapamune and Prograf. In addition to using this technology to build an internal pipeline, Biotica is also open to technology collaborations with partners to generate analogues of their polyketide compounds. They can optimize a natural product lead to reduce toxicity, improve PK or expand IP protection. At the other end of the lifecycle, they can generate new, differentiated follow-ups to commercially successful drugs to expand a franchise into new therapeutic areas or post-patent expiry.