Obcure, a subsidiary of Bio Light Israeli Life Sciences Investments Ltd. (TASE:BOLT), that has developed a drug for the treatment of obesity, reported that its research has revealed that one of the individual compounds is a twice as effective in treating obesity than the drug itself. The greater efficacy came to light during testing on animals.
Obcure plans to develop a new drug from the individual compound in its orginal product, for which it received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to move directly to Phase II clinical trials. The drug was originally registered several years ago for the treatment of Vertigo - Menier Disease but was removed from from shelves in the US due to its lack of efficacy for this indication, a development which led Obcure to patent it as an obesity drug. However, it is still marketed as a treatment for Vertigo - Menier disease in other countries and Obcure will therefore be unable to offer it as an ethical drug outside of the US, unless it registers one of the drug’s individual compounds for treating Vertigo - Menier disease, instead of the drug itself.
The discovery has moved Obcure up from a one molecule company with one trial drug on the market to a two molecule company. It should nevertheless be stressed that the drug development process from molecule to marketing takes 10 years and an investment running into hundreds of millions of dollars.
The upcoming financing round (which will raise $800,000-1.5 million) is likely to leave Bio Light chief science officer and intellectual property manager Dr. Ehrlich with a 93-96% stake in Obcure. “Obcure predicted that one of the drug’s individual compounds would prove more effective than the others , and we have already filed a request to patent this as a treatment for obesity,” he said
Two weeks ago, Bio Light announced it filed a draft prospectus for Obcure with the Securities Authority, although no details were available about the size and structure of the issue. The day before Obcure’s announcement, Bio Light stock gained 8% on NIS 1 million turnover.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on April 26, 2006
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