Proacta Therapeutics close to $12m deal for cancer trials

By SIMON COLLINS, science reporter

Auckland University spinoff company Proacta Therapeutics is about to complete US$8 million ($12.4 million) in fundraising to pay for clinical trials for cancer drugs.

Stanford University has agreed to take a stake in the company and will co-operate in its development of drugs targeted at hypoxia, or lack of oxygen - a condition that occurs inside 60 per cent of hard cancer tumours.

Both traditional cancer treatments, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, do not work in hypoxic conditions.

Proacta chief executive Aki von Roy, a former European president of Bristol Myers Squibb, said he was "cautiously optimistic" that the money to start clinical trials would be tied up in the next four to six weeks.

He has talked to 35 venture capital companies in London, Brussels, San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, Melbourne and elsewhere.

The money will be used initially for animal tests, followed by stage one clinical trials for one drug starting in Auckland in the middle of next year. It will also take two further drugs to the point where they are ready for clinical trials.

Two scientists at Auckland University's Cancer Research Centre, Professors Bill Denny and Bill Wilson, have been working on hypoxia for 20 years.

They are now collaborating with Stanford Professors Martin Brown and Amato Giaccia.

"If you combine what is happening at Stanford with what's happening here at Auckland, I truly believe that we are the company that not only holds the key to solving the problem of hypoxia, but is closer to solving it than anybody in the world," von Roy said. "Our people here in Auckland can play a leading role in this across the globe."

He told Vision Conferences' annual Biotechnology Forum at the Sheraton Auckland yesterday that "great science" was New Zealand's biggest strength in biotech, but capital was its biggest weakness.

He praised the Government's venture investment fund and a new $12 million fund being set up by July to finance New Zealand biotech companies developing joint ventures or marketing in Australia. But that was not enough.

"The venture capital industry in New Zealand is required to take a good hard look at their ability to finance start-ups in the biotech area," he said.

"I hope the link with Australia will help generate sufficient availability to begin financing start-up companies in New Zealand."

AusBiotech executive director Tony Coulepis said that Australian state and federal governments were now looking at matching New Zealand's $12 million transtasman fund.

He said about 25 New Zealand biotech sector chief executives were being invited to join about 75 Australian chief executives at the first AusBiotech CEO forum at a Gold Coast resort next month.

The conference ends today.