Clarity Pharmaceuticals: From $1 to $9 a share - Could this eventually be a cure for prostate cancer?
Clarity Pharmaceuticals Executive Chair Alan Taylor on 3AW, 2GB, 4BC & 6PR on Bulls N' Bears Report
Listen to ASX-listed Clarity Pharmaceuticals Executive Chair Alan Taylor talk to Matt Birney on the Bulls N’ Bears Report about Clarity’s amazing clinical trial results that saw a complete response in one patient and lots with a 90 per cent plus reduction in signs of prostate cancer using “copper” based radiopharmaceuticals.
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Radiopharmaceuticals are a class of drugs with slightly radioactive isotopes that target and then either highlight or treat cancerous cells in the body. Clarity is developing its own version of radiopharmaceuticals known as targeted copper theranostics that use copper isotopes and a cage like biological structure that prevents that copper from leaking into the body while targeting cancerous tumours. The company is knee deep in a number of trials right now for prostrate cancer that are showing some seriously positive results.
RADIO INTERVIEW - TRANSCRIPT
Matt Birney - Welcome to Bulls N' Bears brought to you today by pharmaceutical drug developer, Clarity Pharmaceuticals.
Matt Birney - ASX code: CU6
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and I'm joined now by the Executive Chairman of Clarity Pharmaceuticals, Alan Taylor.
Matt Birney - Hi Alan.
Alan Taylor - Hi Matt.
Matt Birney - Okay so radiopharmaceuticals are a class of drugs with slightly radioactive isotopes that target and then either highlight or treat cancerous cells in the body. Clarity is developing its own version of radiopharmaceuticals known as targeted copper theranostics that use copper isotopes and a cage like biological structure that prevents that copper from leaking into the body.
Matt Birney - The company is knee deep in a number of trials right now for prostrate cancer that are showing some seriously positive results.
Matt Birney - Okay Alan there are a few companies out there developing radiopharmaceuticals, how are yours different?
Alan Taylor - Yeah Matt there's probably two key things that everyone's getting excited about at the moment. One is we get the use of these copper isotopes, what we call the perfect pairing, a copper isotopes for imaging and then therapy and this is a great Aussie invention of actually being able to hold copper in these cages.
Alan Taylor - The second part is, we've developed this fantastic prostate cancer targeting agent which generally gets two to three times the amount of uptake compared to our competitors into the lesion so we can first image the lesions better and then treat them better with the therapeutic copper isotope.
Matt Birney - Okay so Clarity is currently undertaking a dose escalation trial in the US just to make sure your drug is safe for patients with prostate cancer. What results have you received to date just in terms of the safety?
Alan Taylor - The safety has really blown us away. The adverse events are all usually grade one or grade two and go away and there's been no dose limiting toxicities which is fantastic.
Matt Birney - Okay so I know this trial is about making sure the doses are safe to take but I assume you're also monitoring the clinical outcomes right?
Alan Taylor - Yeah that's right and this is what's blown everyone away, so we did a single dose dose escalation and the low, medium and higher levels we've had incredible PSA responses.
Alan Taylor - Everyone probably knows PSA you go and get it checked once a year. Some of the patients we're treating have got their PSA in the hundreds and we've had one of the patients we treated with two doses had a complete response. No detectable disease in their body whatsoever.
Alan Taylor - There's a whole group of patients who have 90 per cent plus drops in their PSA, we've had almost every patient respond to therapy despite failing every line of therapy available to them. It's been an incredible period.
Matt Birney - Your share price ran from a $1 to $9 this year giving you a market cap of about $3 billion at the time. What was the event that got punters piling in?
Alan Taylor - Well there's two key things. One is is the diagnostic market is massive for these products and we can clearly differentiate ourselves from the current standard of care by picking up much smaller lesions, detecting prostate cancer much earlier and whether that's pre-prostatectomy or in when people have what's termed 'biochemical recurrence' but the take home here is the therapy, as I said in patients that have had no hope and we've actually got their tumours to disappear or significantly shrink.
Matt Birney - Alan Taylor from Clarity Pharmaceuticals.
Matt Birney - Thanks for joining me on Bulls N' Bears and remember we're only here to give you information, not advice, which you should of course seek independently.
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and this is Bulls N' Bears.
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