Starpharma: A curious new drug delivery system for cancer-treating drugs
Starpharma CEO Jackie Fairley on 3AW & 2GB Bulls N' Bears Report
Listen to ASX-listed Starpharma CEO Jackie Fairley talk to Matt Birney on the Bulls N’ Bears Report about Starpharma’s stellar trial results delivering cancer-treating drugs to patients that had tried everything.
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Starpharma is a Victorian-based biopharmaceutical company with a focus on dendrimer technology involving precise, synthetically manufactured, water-soluble nanoscale molecules used to develop novel therapeutics and improve the performance of existing pharmaceuticals. Starpharma’s portfolio includes multiple clinical-stage cancer-treating products, which utilise its proprietary Dendrimer Enhanced Product (DEP).
RADIO INTERVIEW - TRANSCRIPT
Matt Birney - Welcome to Bulls N' Bears brought to you today by biotech company, Starpharma
Matt Birney - ASX code: SPL
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and I'm joined now by the CEO of Starpharma, Jackie Fairley
Matt Birney - Hi Jackie
Jackie Fairley - Hi there
Matt Birney - Okay Jackie so as I understand it Starpharma's biotech portfolio includes multiple clinical-stage cancer treating products that utilize your proprietary Dendrimer Enhanced Product or DEP platform, hope I've said that correctly.
Matt Birney - What exactly is DEP without getting too scientific and what problem are you trying to solve with it?
Jackie Fairley - So DEP or Dendrimer Enhanced Product is just the name that we give to using our delivery technology, which is a kind of polymer called a dendrimer to improve the performance of drugs so to reduce toxicities and to improve efficacy and we can apply it to a whole range of drugs, oncology drugs, anti-infectives and we have a number of corporate partnerships that cover it as well.
Matt Birney - So I see you squarely targeting cancer, have you done any trials with DEP and if so what cancers did your trial it on and what sort of outcomes have there been?
Jackie Fairley - Yeah so we have three products in clinical studies internally and the most recent results have come out of our DEP irinotecan clinical program and the results we released last week were in bowel cancer and in ovarian cancer, where we showed some really interesting results in very heavily pre-treated patients so patients who've tried six other therapies before and even in those colon cancer patients, we saw long-standing responses like say 72 weeks and a disease control rate of 48 per cent.
Jackie Fairley - So we saw some really interesting and positive responses in patients as well as a lot lower side effects than you see with the original form of this drug.
Matt Birney - Do you have any big pharmas on board or any of the big players interested?
Jackie Fairley - We do, in fact, we have partnerships for this technology with three of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies already. Merck and Genentech in particular. Merck are working in the antibody-drug conjugate area so yes we do have a number of global partnerships.
Jackie Fairley - Where we're using our technology to help solve problems for those companies too, to make their drugs less toxic, to improve their efficacy and to give them new patent life.
Matt Birney - Jackie Fairley from Starpharma.
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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