New Generation Technology (NGT) incubator company Ora Bio will begin clinical trials of a drug for lung cancer on 60 patients. The trials are not being conducted as part of an US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved protocol, or those of its European counterpart CE, but will instead serve as a clinical data base when applications are filed with these authorities.
Ora Bio’s product, the details of which it has declined to disclose, is currently used as a generic product for the treatment of other indications. Studies conducted at the Weizman Institute of Science found that the product was also suitable for treating cancer. Ora Bio plans to market a higher dosage of the drug in a slightly different formula, as an adjunct to chemotherapy, subject to the completion of registration and clinical trials. It has patented the product’s use for this indication in the US and Israel.
The drug works by inhibiting the development of angiogenesis, the growth of new capillary blood vessels sprouting from established vessels, in a similar manner to the drug Avastin, the financing for which colorectal cancer patients have been campaigning in recent weeks. According to Ora Bio R&D manager Amichai Baron, the company’s drug is chemical, rather than biological, and is therefore smaller, easier to store and can be ingested.
In addition, Baron claims the drug (which is already on the market), has less side effects than Avastin and other similar drugs.
Ora Bio was founded by Baron and his partner, CEO Josef Israeli. They received the franchise for the technology from Yeda Research and Development Company Ltd., which commercializes technology on behalf of the Weizman Institute, where most of the clinical trials have been carried out. Baron was previously associate director business development and the head of the protein-expression department at Quark Biotech Inc., after which he worked as analyst at venture capital firm Israel Healthcare Ventures Ltd.. Israeli is a business consultant and co-founded an Internet company which became the local branch of Sepia. The company has been funded by Chief Scientist, through incubator NTG in Nazareth from which it has received $600,000 to date.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on May 30, 2006
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