Avexa, MNLpharma sign licence agreement

Avexa (ASX:AVX) has signed an exclusive licence agreement allowing the Melbourne-based company to develop and commercialise a number of HIV integrase inhibitors discovered from UK-based MNLpharma's Phytopure library.

The agreement follows an initial collaboration between Avexa and MNLpharma in 2004.

"We've worked with them over the last year or so to screen through potential leads for possible drug candidates -- particularly in the area of HIV initially, but we have exclusivity to work in the anti-viral space," said Avexa CEO Julian Chick.

Integrase is one of the key enzymes required for HIV to replicate. By inhibiting this enzyme, the integration of HIV DNA into the DNA of immune system cells -- which is how infection occurs -- is disabled. While this enzyme has attracted interest and research, there are currently no drugs available that target it.

Chick said that MNLpharma's expertise it to develop novel chemical compounds and then work with partners, such as Avexa, to screen the compounds against potential targets, optimise them and take them into formal preclinical testing.

Under the agreement, Avexa will fund the optimisation, preclinical and clinical development and commercialisation of any resulting products.

"We have a percentage share arrangement with them," said Chick. "If there's any milestones they will be in the latter part of any clinical development."

Avexa's lead compound, AVX754, is a nucleoside analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitor being developed for the treatment of HIV.

While Avexa's program of integrase inhibitors does not relate directly to AVX754, Chick said that, "bringing forward an integrase inhibitor would enable us to potentially bring forward a [AVX]754 and integrase inhibitor combination product at some stage in the future."

"It's really to start building up a franchise of HIV programs," said Chick.

Avexa hopes that by generating treatments for HIV/AIDS that target integrase alone, the significant side effect issues associated with many existing HIV drugs will be avoided.

Avexa's shares were steady at $0.295 at the time of writing.