State comes up with cash for Living Cell

David Collinson

Auckland-based Living Cell Technologies is to get $2.73 million of state funding to boost the development of xenotransplantation treatments - transplants from animals to humans - for Huntington's and diabetes.

David Collinson, chief executive of the Australian-listed company Living Cell, said should clinical trials prove successful, the company could have products for treating Huntington's, and other neurological conditions, ready for market towards the end of 2008.

Diabetes treatments could be ready for market in 2009.

Penetration of 1 per cent of the market for neuro products would be worth about US$10 million, while 1 per cent of the diabetes market was worth about US$100 million.

"So we get say 10 per cent of the market for type-1 diabetes we'd have a billion-dollar business."

Collinson said the Government was looking at setting up guidelines to deal with applications for xenotransplantation.

"We'd be hopeful they start sooner rather than later because the world is moving on and these products are becoming the talk of the town in America and Asia, and there's a lot of competition starting to build up in the background."

However, any delay could see clinical trials take place overseas and New Zealand miss out on the chance to raise its profile for international investment.

" You're talking about billions," he said. "Live cell therapy in America, everyone's talking about it. Soon as it hits the market there's no alternative product for it ... and there's millions of people who want it."

The Huntington's treatment - NeurotrophinCell - uses brain cells from Auckland Island pigs wrapped in gel made from seaweed found off the coast of Norway, while the type-1 diabetes treatment - DiaBCell - uses specially coated pig insulin-producing cells.

When NeurotrophinCell was injected into the brains of monkeys it protected them against chemically induced brain lesions used to mimic Huntington's disease.

The monkeys which received the treatment suffered 10 per cent brain cell death compared to 50 per cent suffered by those that didn't.

If the necessary approval could be gained locally then combined phase one and two human clinical trials, expected to begin early next year for both treatments, would take place in New Zealand, "but if they're too slow we'll have to do it in America".

Small-scale human trials for the diabetes treatment took place in New Zealand, but were halted in 1997 amid fears of pig retroviruses spreading among humans.

The $2.73 million from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology would help Living Cell develop its manufacturing operations and build on existing cell bioprocessing expertise as it approached the clinical trial phase.

The investment is subject to Living Cell being granted approval for the clinical studies, and hitting capital raising and manufacturing targets.

Tom McLeod, a business manager with the foundation, said the investment would help deliver high-margin export revenue.