GAITHERSBURG, Md., April 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Panacos Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a subsidiary of Boston Biomedica, Inc. (Nasdaq: BBII), announced today that the NIH has awarded a four year grant to Professor KH Lee of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in support of his ongoing collaboration with Panacos to discover natural product-based HIV drug candidates. Professor Lee, one of the world's foremost natural products chemists, has collaborated with BBI and Panacos for several years and is the founding member of Panacos' Science and Development Advisory Board.
Last year, Boston Biomedica signed new Sponsored Research (SR) and License Agreements with UNC. BBI's rights and obligations under these Agreements were transferred to Panacos in January, 2000. Under the SR Agreement, Panacos receives first rights to new compounds discovered during the collaboration that target HIV or other diseases. The License Agreement confers worldwide license rights to several families of potential HIV drugs previously discovered in the collaboration, including the drug candidates PA-344, PA-457 and their synthetic analogs, and expands these rights for additional indications.
This grant represents the third renewal of NIH funding for the collaboration, which has been supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for the past eight years. The current grant will provide a total of approximately $1.5M over a four year period, to be used by UNC and Panacos to isolate and identify HIV inhibitors that may be suitable for development as new drug candidates. The plants that are the source of these agents include many that have been used in traditional medicine in the Far East. The plant selection and bioactivity-directed isolation, characterization and analog synthesis is carried out at UNC under the direction of Dr. Lee, Kenan Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Director of the Natural Products Laboratory. The analysis of antiviral activity and mechanism of action studies are performed at Panacos. Professor Lee said: "We are very pleased that the NIH has decided our HIV drug discovery program merits continued funding. We plan to build on our previous accomplishments by utilizing new screening assays and combinatorial chemistry techniques to increase the efficiency of lead compound identification and optimization."
Previously, the Panacos/UNC collaboration has identified several families of small molecule drug candidates targeting HIV that are now the subject of five issued U.S. patents. The most advanced of these compounds potently inhibit HIV infection and appear to have novel mechanisms of action compared with approved drugs. Moreover, they can be readily synthesized and are amenable to scale-up manufacturing. Panacos is performing pre-clinical studies of two of these compounds, PA-344 and PA-457, with the goal of initiating a human clinical trial within 12 months. "The continued support of this collaboration by the NIH recognizes the exceptional productivity that has been achieved over the past several years", commented Dr. Carl Wild, VP of R & D at Panacos. "The new grant will help us tap the vast molecular diversity of natural products in order to discover additional, novel approaches to treat HIV infection."
Panacos is a new company focusing on the discovery and development of antiviral drugs and vaccines with novel mechanisms of action. Its pharmaceutical programs have been funded at BBI for several years and were recently transferred to Panacos to expedite their clinical development and maximize their value for BBI shareholders. BBI has initiated a round of financing with the goal of raising capital for Panacos from venture investors and others in order for Panacos to become an independent private company during 2000. After completion of this financing, BBI intends to maintain a significant but less than 50% ownership interest in Panacos.
Panacos has three pharmaceutical discovery and development platforms. In addition to the Natural Products Platform described above, the Company's Viral Fusion Inhibitor Platform is aimed at identifying novel therapeutics for a variety of medically important viral diseases by targeting the first step in virus infection, i.e., fusion to a human cell. The Company's Vaccine Platform utilizes a proprietary approach for the generation of potential vaccines against HIV and other viruses, based on "fusion active regions" of virus surface proteins that are critical to the infection process.
Boston Biomedica, Inc. is an infectious diseases management company providing products and services for the detection and treatment of infectious diseases (ID) such as AIDS, Lyme Disease, and Viral Hepatitis. The Company has four business units: (1) BBI Diagnostics, an ISO 9001 certified manufacturer and seller of quality control and other diagnostic products used to increase the accuracy of in-vitro diagnostic tests, (2) BBI Clinical Laboratories, a leading specialty infectious diseases testing laboratory, (3) BBI Biotech Research Laboratories, providing R&D support for the other BBI business units as well as contract research services for third parties, and (4) BBI Source Scientific, an ISO 9001 certified manufacturer of laboratory and diagnostic instrumentation. In addition, the Company is pursuing research and development programs in the areas of Pressure Cycling Technology (PCT) and drug discovery (through its subsidiary Panacos Pharmaceuticals), with the goal of introducing new solutions for the detection and treatment of infectious diseases.
Statements contained in this news release that state the Company's or management's intentions, hopes, beliefs, expectations or predictions of the future are "forward-looking" statements. It is important to note that Panacos's actual results could differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ from those projected include the possibility that due to unforeseen technical and other difficulties, Panacos may not be successful in the identification of any new potential drugs and the compounds which have already been identified may not be developed into commercially successful products, Boston Biomedica may not be able to successfully raise the capital required for the development of Panacos's product lines, or that BBI may not be able to establish Panacos as an independent company or such establishment may take longer than currently expected. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained from time to time in Boston Biomedica's SEC filings, including but not limited to Boston Biomedica's report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1999 and on Form 10-Q for the periods ended March 31, June 30 and September 30, 1999. Copies of these documents may be obtained by contacting Boston Biomedica or the SEC.
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CONTACT: Richard T. Schumacher, CEO, or William R. Prather, M.D., Sr. VP of Boston Biomedica, Inc., 508-580-1900, or Graham P. Allaway, Ph.D., President & CEO of Panacos Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 240-631-1395
