Big pharma said to be testing Select's Hep A vaccine

A number of multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies from Europe, the US and the Asia-Pacific are evaluating Select Vaccine's rapid diagnostic hepatitis A kit as a forerunner to license negotiations, the company (ASX:SLT) said on Tuesday.

"They have their own criteria and specifications of what they want," said Select CEO Dr Martin Soust. "It's a similar process to Genelabs' evaluation of our hepatitis E diagnostic."

The evaluation process is expected to be completed by the end of December, Soust said, after which a shortlist of parties would be compiled with a view to finalising a licence agreement within the first half of 2004. "We'd like to hit the ground running early in the new year with discussions," he said.

No decisions have been made so far about whether exclusive or non-exclusive licences would be offered, according to Soust. The companies involved were all large companies involved in diagnostics and vaccines.

"It's important to find companies with good distribution networks as our revenues will be based on royalties on sales of kits," Soust said.

Select Vaccines is expecting to finalise its agreement with Genelabs Diagnostics over its hepatitis E diagnostic shortly. "I would be really disappointed if we didn't have two license agreements by the middle of next year," Soust said.