Starpharma Holdings Limited (ASX:SPL) CEO Dr Jackie Fairley discusses the company’s new licensing deals, a new product, the Zika Virus and Chinese interest in its VivaGel® coated condoms A brief overview of Starpharma Holdings Limited
(ASX:SPL), so we’re a publicly listed company on the ASX, market capitalization of around $250 million. We have an extensive array of partnerships with global companies, which include AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN), Ren Pharmaceuticals, Adama and Agra Chemicals, Ansell in the sexual health space. And in all of those product areas, we’re applying a specific kind of polymer technology, which is proprietary to Starpharma. It’s called a dendrimer and it’s very versatile in its application. So we have a whole range of products, based on a single technology base.
So our recent operational highlights and some pretty exciting developments recently. Most recently, we announced a partnership with the Australian Olympic Commission, the Australian Olympic team I should say, for the use of our VivaGel coated condoms, which are marketed by Ansell, under the Dual Protect brand. So the Australian team will be going to Rio with the Dual Protect condoms, with the antiviral VivaGel coating.
As well as that, we also secured European approval for our VivaGel BV product, which is used for Bacterial Vaginosis, so across the whole EU and associated countries. And in addition to that, we’ve signed distribution arrangements for that product in Australia and New Zealand, with Aspen Healthcare. And we’ve also signed a deal recently with Adama. So there’s been progress across a whole range of our parts of the business. And then late last year, we had a very large deal signed, a multi product licence with the global giant pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca using our drug delivery technology in a range of products, against a specific drug target.
So the financials for Starpharma, we have a strong cash position. We did a capital raising late last year, so we have in excess of $50 million in the bank. In our most recent half-year results, we had cash inflows of just over $7 million, which incorporated the first payment through the AstraZeneca deal, of over $3 million.
So we’re investigating internally, we have internal programs in our drug delivery portfolio. We have some internal programs in the anti cancer space. So
DEPDocetaxel is an anti cancer, an improved version of the marketed product, Taxotere. And in addition to our internal programs, which we fund and take through to a more advanced stage of development, we also have an extensive array of commercial partnerships.
The most significant of those in the drug delivery space is with AstraZeneca; it’s a multi product licence. It’s utilizing our drug delivery technology to improve the performance of their drugs. And the first two drugs have already been nominated, but it is by definition, so it’s for multiple products. So that has potential to generate for Starpharma significant value, through both royalties and milestones.
So the activity of VivaGel and Zika virus is something that we’ve only just recently announced. When Zika virus was first identified as being sexually transmitted, in addition obviously to the mosquito transmission, we undertook testing of the product at some international laboratories, which we’ve used previously for registration studies and we found that it was in fact, highly potent against Zika virus. Now the VivaGel Active is coated onto condoms, for the dual protect product. It has activity against not only Zika, but also HIV, genital herpes and HPV. But that combination of antiviral activity is proving very interesting, as a potential product for the fight against Zika.
This is proving a pretty exciting 12 months that’s coming up. As I said, we’ve got a lot of progress on the drug delivery part of our business. And the partnerships, including the AstraZeneca partnership are making very good progress. So I expect that we’ll see some further announcements in relation to those programs, as they move forward. And in addition, further partnered programs. We also have progress in our three clinical trials, which are running, so DEP Docetaxel and the two clinical trials for our VivaGel product. We’ll see further regulatory approvals for the VivaGel products, both the condom and the VivaGel BV product, and further commercial partnerships for the distribution of the VivaGel product, so quite a full year ahead.
Ends
