RNAi REGENERATES GENESIS
March 12th 2009 22:25
Wednesday February 18, 2009
Daily news on ASX-listed biotechnology companies
* ASX, BIOTECH DOWN: POLARTECHNICS UP 16%, PHYLOGICA DOWN 30%
* RNAi REGENERATES GENESIS
* VENTRACOR REGRETS DEATHS, REBUTTS NON-DISCLOSURE ARTICLE
* PROGEN CITES $500k AVEXA BREAK FEE; BLOCKS SINGLE MEETING
* POLARTECHNICS EXPANDS CERVISCREEN HOME USE
* CSL H1 PROFIT UP 44% TO $502m
* GSK’S $20m PUSHES BIOTA $12.8M H1 LOSS TO $7.2m PROFIT
* PROBIOTEC POSTS H1 PROFIT UP 73% TO $4.3m
* MEDICAL THERAPIES CONVERTS 17¢ NOTES FOR 6.8¢, SHARES
* COGSTATE, UNITED BIOSOURCE PART COMPANY
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GENESIS R & D
New-Zealand-based Genesis R & D is hoping to raise $NZ4-6 million ($A3.2-4.8 million) to further develop two RNA interference (RNAi) technologies.
In Melbourne to meet investors, potential investors and the media, Genesis chief executive officer Stephen Hall told Biotech Daily that Genesis started as a therapeutics developer became a bio-agriculture company from 1996 to 2004 and has returned to therapeutics.
Mr Hall said he was appointed chief executive officer in December 2004 and the company has sold or licenced its agricultural products, “retaining some royalty streams [which are] economic assets without any funding requirements”.
Mr Hall said the company had $NZ900,000 in cash with a further payment of $NZ700,000 expected from New Zealand’s Inland Revenue Department.
He said Genesis was burning $NZ300,000 a month.
Mr Hall said the company was owed $NZ2 million by the Hong Kong and Singapore-based Pure Power Global since August 2008, as payment for the sale of shares in Biojoule.
Separately, the company has sold its royalty rights to bio-information technology in return for a 10 percent stake in Real Time Genomics, a US-based entity backed by San Francisco venture capital firm Catamount Ventures.
Genesis said in a media release that the Slim Search software was “seeing significant market interest based on its ability to rapidly assemble and query genomic datasets”.
Having licenced or sold off non-core assets, Mr Hall said the company was clearly focused on RNAi therapies.
“We have a preclinical RNAi candidate with in vivo delivery data for intra-tumoral head and neck cancers in mice,” Mr Hall said.
He said the RNAi lead candidate, RRM1, was a small interfering RNA (siRNA) compound.
But he said the company was also pursuing a new technology called single-strand RNA (ssRNA) “which is expected to have better in vivo intracellular delivery compared to siRNA”.
He said the single separate strands of complementary RNA were introduced into the cell like administering a small molecule.
Mr Hall said the data on ssRNA was achieved through fluorescence studies using flow cytometry “showing the single strand RNA cannot anneal outside the cell but can anneal inside the cell”.
He said ssRNA in vivo data was “probably 12 months away”.
Mr Hall said ssRNA degraded over time, unlike short hairpin RNA (shRNA) “which remains in the cell continuing to produce RNA interference for a long period and potentially integrating into the genome potentially affecting future generations”.
Mr Hall said regulators were very concerned with the implications of genome changes.
“Most of the world is chasing siRNA and our single strand RNA is in the same conceptual space,” Mr Hall said.
He said that Genesis had “kept ssRNA under the radar” while completing patenting work, but there had been interest for both technologies from other major players in the area of gene silencing, all from the US.
Mr Hall said that through attending bio-conferences in the US and Europe and taking advantage of the intense partnering sessions, all the major companies were aware of the work Genesis was doing.
Apart from the capital raising, Mr Hall said Genesis expected to sign trade collaboration deals to further develop its technologies.
Genesis has the ASX code of GEN and was untraded at six cents.
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