Pharmacopeia to focus on developing portfolio, maintaining compounds longer

By Jennifer Lanning Drey

Eugene, Ore., Sept. 18 - Pharmacopeia Drug Discovery, Inc. said it has shifted its business strategy toward building its own portfolio and plans to develop more compounds through clinical phases rather than out-licensing them following the preclinical stages, Leslie Browne, chief executive officer of Pharmacopeia, said Monday.

"We are building the company to retain more ownership in the work that we do. Everything we're doing today is consistent with that strategy," Browne said at the Merriman Curhan Ford investor summit.

Browne also said the company's internal pipeline currently has a series of programs in late-stage optimization phases, and the company expects to bring at least one additional compound into preclinical development before the end of the year.

In its pipeline of compounds in clinical development, Pharmacopeia expects to file an Investigational New Drug (IND) application with the Food and Drug Administration for DARA, which is its dual acting receptor antagonist, in the first quarter of 2007.

The company will file the IND to evaluate the anti-hypertensive activity of the compound, but Pharmacopeia believes DARA's most important opportunity will be in chronic kidney disease, which by 2010 is projected to be a $17 billion market, Browne said.

By demonstrating an anti-hypertensive effect in phase 1 clinical trials, DARA would confirm its potential in chronic renal disease, he said.

Pharmacopeia is also continuing to develop its 11 partnered compounds, and two of its partnered programs have compounds approaching phase 2 clinical trials.

One of the company's two p38 kinase inhibitor compounds, being developed by Bristol Meyers Squibb, could be in phase 2 before the end of 2006, he said.

Princeton, N.J.-based Pharmacopeia discovers and develops novel small-molecule therapeutics.

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